Beggar Bride

by Gillian White

  Looking forward to your next visit although I do realise that you must be terribly busy. Take good care of yourself, and your beautiful boys. What a pity it is that one will inherit so much while the other has so little to look forward to.

  Love as ever, Aunty Val.’

  Who? Who has done this and why?

  It’s as if a stone has hit her between the eyes and blinded her.

  There is no implicit threat in the wording, no clue as to who could have sent it, but a letter like this doesn’t need threats, the fact that it exists is horrifying enough.

  And the postmark is Godalming, Surrey.

  Who does she know who lives there?

  Numbly, she reads it again.

  Whoever sent it knows absolutely everything that Ange has been doing, even the blue bedjacket which she made such a fuss about sending for Christmas, going so far as to take it back to the shop and change the colour from rose in case Aunty Val didn’t like it. It was a nice, fleecy, cosy bedjacket and very expensive. She binned it when last she went shopping.

  Who? And what do they want?

  Surely Billy is the only person so intimate with every detail. While the lifestyle of Aunty Val in her Surrey residential home could be invented by anyone. Billy and Tina? It has to be Billy and Tina.

  And this thought is so painful, so utterly harrowing, that Ange, who is never sick, is driven to the bathroom to bend over the basin, retching up a kind of bile that tastes like total betrayal. She is weak and debilitated and shaking dramatically as if she is steaming with some kind of fever.

  Her mind is a battle of conflicting thoughts and suspicions.

  One minute she pieces together reassuring arguments and goes over them again and again. Tina might, but Billy would never take part in such a vile thing, even for a joke, he would know the effect a letter like this would have on her. And she could swear that he and Tina were only good friends, not close enough to come together in a conspiracy to cause such terrible torment. If the three have any grievances between them they air them, bring them out into the open, although, she has to admit, Tina and Billy are very often alone with the children. Plenty of time to concoct some sort of devilish plan.

  But why?

  And has she lost Billy forever?

  Dare she show them the letter? Dare she show them and stand there and watch their reaction, is she strong enough to see betrayal in Billy’s eyes and still survive?

  Sighing, she knows she has no alternative. Of course Ange will have to show the letter to Billy and Tina.

  But not now. Not yet. When she feels stronger.

  With an anguish only bearable because it is too much to suffer at once, Ange walks to the window burdened like an aged old woman and gazes out over the Hurleston gardens, on through the park and down to the woods and the river below. She is way beyond tears. Billy did love her, she is certain of that, they not only love each other but they like each other, too. But Billy is easily influenced, and maybe Tina, for some devious motive of her own, has twisted his mind to suit her own devious purpose?

  What can they be trying to achieve between them? Drive her mad? Have her committed into some grim asylum so they can carry on with their profitable deception for as long as it suits them, without having Ange to worry about? Perhaps she should have agreed with their plan, to stay at Hurleston until Archie is seven.

  Her fingers play stupidly with her mouth. Oh God, oh God. She reads the letter for the fifth time.

  She thinks of Tina’s sharp face, smooth skinned, no longer marked by bruises. Tina would dearly love to play happy families. Perhaps they want her to run away so they can be together? Well, they have certainly chosen a most sinister way of chasing her out. Perhaps Billy has reverted to type, as Sandra Biddle warned he would, but Ange put this down to jealousy on the part of a frumpy old spinster. Oh Billy, oh Billy, no! Ange despairs, there’s an overwhelming sense of loss, desolation and finality.

  Her hands still shake with the shock. She is terrified. And up until now Aunty Val has been such a comforting image, so believable, so solid, many times Ange forgot the old thing was merely an invention of convenience.

  She is losing her mind. Billy would never do this to her. The letter writer has to be Ffiona, that bitter woman who, since her contested divorce, seems to live for revenge, with so many bloody axes to grind. Ffiona and Honesty? But if Ffiona and Honesty have found out so many dangerous secrets, what can be behind this curious angle? They must know that Archie is not the genuine heir to Hurleston, a bastard, most probably, as a result of his mother’s bigamous marriage, and if not a bastard in law, then surely he would be a Harper and legally belong to Billy? Surely, if Ffiona and Honesty are behind this letter, if they have discovered all this, then all they need to do to get her and Archie out of the way is to blab to Fabian?

  And she’d even begun to believe that Honesty quite liked her. They’d been getting on much better over the autumn and first few months of winter and Ange had put behind her the fears and terrors of that oddly probing conversation. Honesty even bought Archie a teddy bear for his first birthday. Billy and Tina were quite right. She was in danger of becoming paranoid over the whole situation.

  How wrong can you be?

  She should have followed her own intuition and got out at the time.

  The vindictive Ffiona and her daughter, Honesty? It is well within the bounds of possibility that, with Honesty’s money to help her, Ffiona put a trace on her tail in order to dig up the dirt. Well, she has certainly succeeded! Ange’s face drains white and she finds it a struggle to breathe. They obviously want to blackmail her first, but getting the money is going to be tricky. It was embarrassing enough asking for an allowance in the first place, something that never crossed her mind when she first confronted Fabian.

  An allowance.

  She broke it to him gently, after all, she was the one who had originally insisted on hanging onto her independence. But now there was no necessity to keep visiting Billy and Jacob, she’d stopped going away so much, only the occasional visits to stay in their house at the Broughtons in order to placate the nosy neighbours, or in order to visit the clinic with Jacob. But when she went there, Billy, Tina and the children came too, so Ange could hardly use her old excuse of travelling abroad on business alone.

  ‘I don’t like being away so much,’ she said, after dinner soon after Christmas, when they sat in the little drawing-room sipping liqueurs brought in on a silver tray by Clayden. ‘I thought it wouldn’t bother me, but it does. I miss Archie too much. I want to be near him, especially at the age he is. He’s growing up fast, I want to be the one he turns to, not the nanny.’

  Fabian’s reaction to this was totally unexpected. He paused, leaving the glass half-way to his lips, forgotten. He turned and stared at Ange and she remembered him looking at her this way when she suggested Ffiona might have killed Helena all those months ago. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘Stop working?’

  ‘Well, I have been slowing down tremendously lately. I thought it might be nice to have a rest for just a few years, just until Archie starts school.’

  ‘But why?’ His glass was in the same position, poised in the air between him and the little Queen Anne table. ‘Aren’t you happy with Nanny Tree? I thought you were satisfied with the present arrangements. After all, drat it, Angela, you were the one who chose her.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s nothing to do with Tina. She’s lovely and Archie adores her. I get on with her very well. But don’t you understand, Fabian, a mother wants to be with her baby.’

  He finally took a sip of his brandy, gazing thoughtfully at its contents, frowning down on the golden liquid as if the quality was wanting. ‘And what, might I ask, do you propose to do with yourself all day?’

  ‘Oh don’t worry, Fabian, I don’t intend to become an activist, like Helena, or a pampered vamp like Ffiona. I will be quite happy here at Hurleston with the occasional trip to London and of course, my weeks with Aunty Val in the little hotel I have found in town.’r />
  ‘But this all costs money, Angela.’

  She couldn’t believe she was hearing right. Was he joking? A score of retorts danced through her head, but she bit her lip firmly. Only last month the press brought up the subject of his indecent wages once again, and the recent share deal which had made him a second fortune overnight. In the meantime his so-called respected firm made five hundred workers redundant and there’s more to go next year.

  ‘Well I’m sorry, Fabian,’ she started to say in dismay.

  His eyes flashed. He stared at her intensely. He tried to backtrack from his first, ludicrous objection but his manner was cold and forbidding. ‘It does children no good at all to have their mothers fussing over them, spoiling them, interfering with nursery routine.’

  Her assumed composure was nearly gone. ‘I realise that, but…’

  Fabian’s smile was a stony one. ‘You find my reaction shocking, don’t you? But look what happened to the twins. They were damnably near to going off the rails.’

  ‘Those were quite different circumstances, Fabian, and I am nothing like Helena. I shan’t need much money, but I certainly don’t intend to beg.’

  Fabian compressed his thin lips. Perhaps he was just disappointed in her lack of ambition, overflowing with that driving force himself, he must find it hard to understand why someone’s career should suddenly assume such insignificance. Or maybe he really was mean, as Ffiona was always suggesting, and Helena, too, according to the twins. Mister Mean. What a laugh! In fact Ange didn’t need money at all, she was already pocketing the thousand pounds a week for Aunty Val. She only asked him to cover her tracks, in case he might wonder what she was living on.

  ‘Well how much do you think you might require?’ And he continued to watch her steadily.

  ‘I leave that entirely to you, Fabian,’ she said in a reasonable tone, trawling around for some dignity, some pride. ‘All my expenses are paid. I have credit cards at all the shops. My travel arrangements are catered for so really I need very little, just the odd change really.’ But she felt like a worker asking a stern boss for a rise. ‘But there’s clothes and entertainment, Archie’s bits and pieces, the hotel bills when I stay in Surrey… the little one I stay at doesn’t take cards.’

  ‘If only you’d stop being so secretive Ruth Hubbard could sort all those out…’

  ‘I am not being secretive, Fabian, you know very well why I want to keep Aunty Val’s whereabouts to myself. Too many people would know if you knew and she’s getting on so well, she is happier than she’s been in years and I hate to put any of that in jeopardy.’

  She ended up with an extra five hundred a week but it was money bitterly offered and sourly given.

  What if the letter writer is Fabian himself, playing with her, tormenting her like a cat with a mouse before the kill? Ange can’t bear it. His reputation is hard and ruthless, there’d be nothing he would stop short of should he discover the extent of his wife’s shameful deception and it’s not as if he hasn’t been wounded before.

  Twice.

  Everyone has their breaking point.

  And in Fabian’s case the motive behind the letter would be to torture, to torture and drag out the pain for as long as he could. Ange turns a thousand questions round and round in her splitting head. The most likely result of the letter, whoever the writer might be, would be Ange’s hasty and quiet departure from Hurleston with both her children. So who would benefit most from that?

  Not Fabian. Knowing him as she does, whatever the truth of the matter, he would fight to keep what he now considers to be his son, no matter how many tests proved positively that the child was Billy’s.

  But Ffiona and Honesty would want her disappearance, with the children as well. How simple it would be, for Ange and the children to melt away and never be found again, just another missing person, soon to drop from the public eye.

  Billy and Tina would want Ange to leave them to share the profits between them—a two-way split, and on their own terms without Ange to bully them—but they, too, would need to keep Fabian’s heir. Oh God, she feels so alone.

  But what about Elfrida and Evelyn? Too fantastic to contemplate? Maybe not. Could it be that the elderly and invalid incumbent of Hurleston, not the old fool that he makes out to be, and his doughty wife in her horsey headsquares, have stumbled upon some awful truth and are trying to force Ange and the children out with no fuss? Or perhaps they think they can frighten her into telling the truth? No, they are far too outspoken, fighters both, neither of them would consider behaving in such an underhand, cowardly manner.

  Oh God, oh God, what shall I do? And she’d thought she was doing so well, being so tough that nobody doubted her.

  Her knees are trembling now. She reads the letter again. And again.

  Ange is now already in prison, a cowering, defeated creature, no way out of this dilemma, nobody to confront directly, no one to plead with, no trial. Will she ever be happy again? And this is only what she deserves, after all, she is wicked, guilty of bigamy, fraud, obtaining money by false pretences and no doubt a host of technical offences she hasn’t even heard of. How easy it would be, and almost a relief, to go straight to the police with the letter, to fall on her knees, beg for mercy, confess to her sins and be done with it.

  And then there’s that dreadful man Murphy O’Connell, he’d stop short at nothing to earn himself a few bob, poor Helena went to him for help when she believed she was pregnant, the woman must have been desperate. Look what had happened to Helena. My God, my God! And why did she seek an abortion a few days before she died? Ange holds herself up by gripping the bedroom windowsill. If it hadn’t been within reach she would have collapsed on the floor. Could the writer of this menacing letter be the same maniac who lured Helena to her death? The open verdict means it could be anyone.

  And is there really nobody at all she can trust?

  28

  HONESTY ALMOST COLLIDES WITH Angela when they both go to collect the post. The stepmother wears a look of fanatical fervour as if she’s expecting to hear of the death of a loved one. This year Honesty is twenty-one and comes into her trust. Fabian is organising a grand ball for her at Hurleston.

  Of course, the one guest Honesty would love to come cannot possibly do so. Oh, what would he look like in a dress suit? She imagines Callister, so enthralling and gallant, transfixing all eyes at the ball, overwhelming even the women in their glittering dresses in the same way that Angela seems almost to bewitch her own surroundings with her beauty.

  A magical charisma.

  Over the years since she has known him Honesty’s passion for Callister has become almost unendurable. And lately she seems to be floundering along through life in an obsessive, clamouring torment for Callister gives his love as freely as his words and most women, entranced by him, aren’t slow in coming forward. Damn it.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asks Angela, paling. ‘Should there be?’

  ‘You seem so jumpy, and you look pale.’

  ‘Too many late nights.’ Angela laughs it off, and seems relieved to find that most of the post consists of replies for Honesty’s party, nothing for her at all.

  Because of her gnawing infatuation, even the horror of Daddy’s remarriage has assumed more of an ache in her side rather than the spear it felt like to start with, nothing like so bad as when he married Helena and Honesty was put out in the cold. In those days the only people she could confide in were the homely, kind Estelle, cook at Cadogan Square, and Grandmama and Grandpapa, of course, although they are of another, more stalwart generation, and could not properly appreciate Honesty’s pain. Once Fabian was married to Angela the birth of a son and heir seemed almost inevitable, and although her nose has been put out of joint, and her eventual income vastly reduced, even these things seem inconsequential now.

  Although Callister doesn’t see it that way.

  So Honesty can rest assured that something will be done. He has promised her he wil
l do something, that their original plan is still relevant. He assures her it is, and Honesty has to believe him.

  Well, look what happened to Helena.

  Nearly four years ago.

  How time flies.

  It was the end of The Rudge summer holidays, and Honesty had been staying in London because everyone else, including Grandmama and Grandpapa, had gone to Scotland for the shoot. Even Helena, up in London for the night with the grotesque and graceless twins, had left this morning. She’d worshipped him in those days, too, ever since that day he seduced her—a craving for his mighty dominance, something to do with her father?—and she’s never wanted anyone else. All men are weedy compared with Callister, a man who embodies the primordial and unrestrained. ‘I’m in love with you,’ she remembers saying, surprised to hear the words, surprised that she knew what they meant, and wondering vaguely where they had come from, and how it had happened that they had been spoken in her voice.

  Her young innocence was soon replaced by a tormented and eager woman.

  Staying in London, away from him all those weeks, was purgatory. She was lonely, on a different level of being from her school friends with their silly, childish conversation and seventeen-year-old preoccupations. Oh she went along with them, parties, picnics on the river, shopping sprees, theatre visits, but she was never one of them and what is more, she didn’t want to be.

  Honesty would probably see it all in a different light, now. Being obsessed is not pleasant, not when it goes on year after year. Knowing what she knows now she would have got out… there was a point when she could have pulled back, wasn’t there?

  Anyway, back then she was spending the evening with Estelle and that dreadful man, Murphy, watching television in the basement because the house upstairs felt so lonely and empty with only her in it. After Murphy went to bed, with his habitual show of scratching and burping—how could his wife bear to go near him let alone share a bedroom?—Estelle got down to the nitty gritty.