Beggar Bride

by Gillian White

  ‘There is only one, and he is a boy,’ says Lady Elfrida determined to be helpful. ‘He does the whole village and then comes up here. He opens up the shop on a Sunday, marks the papers and takes them round. He does the lot on his racing bicycle. His name is Moppy Blunt.’

  ‘Well,’ says Inspector Evans with patience, ‘in that case, my men will be interviewing Moppy Blunt.’

  Getting the money together will not be a big problem, the only real handicap being that it is a Sunday and nobody’s around on a Sunday. Even so, Simon Chalmers and Ruth Hubbard are dealing with the matter now by phone and fax in Fabian’s study. Fabian curses the fact, understandable though it was, that Angela felt it necessary to call in the police in the first place. All in all, apart from sudden bursts of tears, his young wife is standing up to it all quite well. But the police can be such bumbling fools, when all Fabian wants is the safe return of his son. He is determined to make quite sure that they leave him alone, no secret traps, when he makes the drop.

  The kidnappers’ representative, an unnamed priest, an innocent pig-in-the-middle picked out at random, is due to telephone Hurleston at four o’clock this evening with important instructions.

  ‘I’m going out,’ says Honesty all of a sudden, pushing back her chair so it nearly falls over. ‘I can’t stay suffocating in here all day waiting like this, just waiting, it is driving me mad.’

  ‘Don’t leave the immediate area,’ warns Inspector Evans.

  Honesty gives a patronising scowl and takes some sugar lumps from the silver dish.

  ‘And do take care, midear,’ puts in Elfrida, only able to munch on a Horlicks tablet. She can’t face her usual boiled egg and toast. ‘These blighters might still be hanging around.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ says Inspector Evans. ‘They’ll be well away from here by now if they’ve got any sense.’

  Honesty needs to think. She saddles her black gelding, Conker, after giving him his sugar lump treats, and allows him to walk at his own pace through the summer fields, his warm hide mingling pleasantly with the scents of grasses and clover.

  She needs to think and she needs to talk to Callister.

  After Helena’s death, coming so suddenly after Callister learned of her pregnant state, Honesty froze when she heard there would be an inquest. So the police actually believed the woman could have been murdered and this idea, which had come to Honesty right away, took some grappling with.

  Could Callister have taken the necessary steps to protect his investment?

  But Helena was the one who provided the funds which enabled the travellers to survive—materials for the handiwork they sold in the local market, tools, refits and spare parts for their dodgy vehicles, vets’ bills for their dubious animals, saws and axes to enable them to gather fuel from the Hurleston Woods. In short, anything the travellers asked for, Helena provided, so why would Callister cut off his nose to spite his face? With Helena gone he would have to find another sponsor, although he knew full well, of course, that Honesty would happily step forward.

  There were many folks willing and eager to martyr themselves for his cause.

  There is no way of predicting him, and yes, Honesty needs every penny she can lay her hands on, supporting Callister and his loyal congregation proves surprisingly expensive.

  But if he had done something terrible, if Callister had coldbloodedly murdered Helena, then why would he come forward and admit to finding her body?

  When she’d approached him at the time he’d told her, with that quiet dignity that made her feel witless and a louse, ‘Why don’t you have more faith, Honesty? The power of prayer, the power of thought, the power of the woods and the skies and all the forces of all the gods, why would I ever have need to soil my hands?’ His big dark eyes directed their gaze into Honesty’s and seemed to light and flame with violent conviction. And he quoted from The Prophet, ‘Trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity…’

  And then, ‘Why would I kill a woman who was bearing my child?’

  His child? He and Helena? He smiled when he told her that, seemed to enjoy the telling. Honesty felt sick with heart-break and jealousy. She hated him then and she hated Helena, she was glad she was dead. So much for the precious plan, and how vulnerable she really was. If the child had turned out to be male Callister wouldn’t have needed her… he’d have had all the influence he wanted over Fabian’s second wife.

  She had hung her head and turned meekly away, not knowing what to make of that answer, but she does understand that, for some mystical reason, Callister has the power to manipulate fate in his two strong hands. For he has studied ancient arts, medicines, pagan rites and beliefs dating almost as far back as when human life first began.

  But now her doubts are back, bigger and more terrifying than ever, pounding to get in no matter how fast she urges the black horse on, demanding admission to her head.

  She must see him, she must.

  Could Callister, that incubus, half devil, half man, have grown tired of waiting, could he be so impatient he’s decided to take this terrible step instead, to collect his money and go, in exchange for the child?

  In her mind she hears his contemptuous laugh, the laugh he will give when she confronts him in all his challenging and monumental beauty.

  Could he be contemplating scuppering the plan, the plan they have depended on for so long, could he be planning to go away and abandon her?

  Oh God, this is the effect he has, he takes away any future save that of the anticipation of being with him again…

  Never has Honesty imagined such terrible, intense pain, a pain which daren’t be touched, a pain which must be left in a kind of hollow cradle to float and rock, so safe that nothing can break in and set free the kind of swarming anguish she knows she would be unable to bear.

  33

  KEEPING ARCHIE OUT OF sight… that’s the imperative task assigned to Billy and Tina and they are doing their absolute best. Not that there’s been too much difficulty so far, nobody is remotely interested in the handyman’s kids playing happily in the nursery, and if he goes out Archie wears a baseball cap with the peak pulled down hard over his eyes.

  Neither Jacob, nor Petal, have ever dabbled in the everyday life of the grandly aristocratic Ormerods, their parts have always been to stay quietly in the wings, to know their place. When Billy and Tina gave their statements to the police early this morning, Petal and Archie stayed out of sight in the day nursery. ‘We don’t want to worry them,’ said the detective called Dowell. ‘It’s surprising how kids can sense a panicky atmosphere and this has to be the worst nightmare for any child to be thinking about in bed at night. It’s not so hot for the adults, either. Shit.’

  As soon as Ange can properly get away, pleading a headache, taking with her the bottle of sleeping pills prescribed, she wobbles frailly upstairs to the nursery, flinging herself into Billy’s arms which are waiting there for her.

  ‘Oh Ange,’ he sobs, ‘oh Ange.’

  ‘We have to show them the letters now, Billy,’ she cries, wetting his cheeks with her tears. ‘They might help the police, they might provide the necessary clue, I just don’t bloody care what happens to us, they must find Jacob and bring him back safe and sound.’

  ‘I know, Ange, I know,’ Billy holds her tight. ‘But the letters can’t possibly come from the kidnapper…’

  Ange pushes herself away, scowling in bewilderment. ‘Why not? How d’you know?’

  He tries to explain, tries to sound sensible and under control while inside his heart is burning away to cinders. ‘You must try and understand. The letter writer knows everything, he knows about Jacob and Archie, if he was the kidnapper he’d never have made such a stupid sodding mistake.’

  Tina, red-eyed, chips in, ‘And if we show the letters to Fabian we’re lost, Ange, you know that already. Fabian would never pay over a million pounds for Jacob, especially once he realises what we’ve done.’

  ‘So there’s nothing we can do?’
groans Ange sighing deeply. ‘Nothing? Nothing. Is that what you’re telling me?’ And then she collapses, throws herself down on the sofa and weeps and Billy and Tina stand and cry quietly beside her.

  Their only hope now is that Jacob is released when Fabian pays the ransom. The minute she’s got him back in her arms Ange is going to run, to run and run away from here forever and never come back, they should never have come in the first place, they should never have contemplated such an ambitious scheme, and there she was in Willington Gardens believing that Jacob would grow up in danger of fights, drugs, muggings but not this, dear God, never this.

  Oh, what are they doing to him now? Please God, whoever they are, don’t let them hurt him. He’s so frail, so brave, so innocent, so anxious to please, such a loving, funny little boy. And how can they possibly wait, doing nothing, nobody else in their thoughts but Jacob, until the next communication from the kidnappers supposedly at four o’clock.

  ‘Some people go for months, for years waiting for news,’ cries Ange, lying flat on her stomach with her head in her arms. ‘I mean, think about your mum, Billy, think how she must be feeling. She can’t have stopped caring, just because the person you love has disappeared you don’t stop caring.’

  ‘That’s different,’ says Billy. ‘I went on my own. I was a grown man when I left.’

  ‘It was my sodding mam who ditched me,’ sighs Tina, hugging herself in her arms, pacing up and down, from rug to rug, over the cork-tiled nursery floor. ‘She found a man and that was that, we didn’t get on and it was up to me to get out. But I was sixteen, and wise, huh, so I thought. I hadn’t met Ed then. And then I wasted all those years with that dumb bastard, he broke nearly every bone in my body and I managed to convince myself that that was something to do with love…’

  ‘But you got out in the end,’ says Ange, sniffing hard. ‘We all got out in the end, didn’t we? And it was working, wasn’t it? Tell me, Billy, tell me it was working until…’

  ‘It was working very well. I didn’t know it would work…’

  ‘And then those bloody, filthy, scummy letters. How I wish I could find out who sent them.’

  ‘You’ve changed your mind about Ffiona then?’

  Ange sits up, her hair awry, her face pale and tear-stained, looking like a battered child, vulnerable, lost, as she sits on the edge of the sofa, doubled almost in half with the pain. ‘I just don’t see how Ffiona could have found so many things out, even with an army of private detectives. Some of the things written there are so bloody personal, and Honesty seems so certain her mother isn’t up to doing anything that involves any planning, or even thinking. Having met her, I think I’ve got to agree.’

  ‘Then who?’ asks Tina, pausing briefly as she passes Ange, moving on to look out of the next tall window she comes to.

  ‘God only knows. But you’re right, whoever wrote those sodding letters would never make such a mistake, they seem to know almost everything about Jacob and Archie, just as if they are here with us, watching over us day by day.’ And Ange shivers violently.

  They are right though, whoever it is is right about her lost childhood. She hated it. She hated herself in those days. Moving on, getting used to one place, getting to know the roads, the shops, the routes, the people, their likes and dislikes, and then on again, somewhere else, nobody ever asked her, was it her fault?

  She must be a very wicked child.

  She started testing, the minute she felt she might relax, she started testing the waters at school and at home, taking money, lying, skiving off school, nobody ever passed the test and then, when Mrs Wilson found her in bed with her two teenage boys something must have been put on her record because things changed from that moment on. People talked to her differently, looking at her strangely, as if they were trying to peer inside the pretty wrapping, untie the knots, cut the ribbons and get to her very soul.

  They must never find her soul, that was the one thing she could control, that was where she kept her innermost secrets and the silvery bits. Her body and brain might not be precious, they could treat those as they liked, but they had to leave her soul alone because it was so tender.

  She had not seduced those gangly boys, lured them into her bed like some Lolita kind of siren, stripped herself naked and encouraged them to do the same. It was not as they told it at all, it was quite the opposite, she went to bed, they undressed her against her will, but of course Mrs Wilson was bound to believe their story, any mother would believe her own children. When you’re only a foster child even a game of doctors and nurses is suspect, the psychiatrists step in with their warped minds…

  Not that Ange can complain. She was never cruelly treated, she never went hungry, she was never cold or lacking for new shoes or books to read, she never had an empty house to come home to.

  And Sandra Biddle, who was there from the start like a settled rock, always told her, ‘Children who have a difficult childhood often turn out the most interesting. The last thing you want is to cruise through those early years with no hurdles to jump at all.’

  Hurdles? Shit. Well, Ange must agree to differ. She’d been determined that little Jacob, and Archie, too, would always feel safe and cherished, she wanted them to come to her with all their little problems, real or imaginary, she’d do anything in this world to make their childhoods happy. Who cares if they turn out boring?

  It must be nice to be boring.

  Safe. To clean your car on a Sunday. To Hoover your fireplace. To spend your money on double-glazing. To go to Jersey on holiday. To use a fold-up silver Christmas tree and put it in the attic exactly twelve days after Christmas to avoid bad luck.

  But now look.

  Oh God, oh God.

  Now look what has happened to her child.

  The afternoon crawls along, nobody knows how to pass the time. The four o’clock deadline looms large. Ange spends her time between the great hall and its silent, sombre, expectant assembly, the British stiff upper lip brigade, and the nursery with its more natural hysterics where nothing is expected of her, one moment convincing herself that all will be well, the next unable to breathe, gasping, vomiting, fearing the worst.

  Billy and Ange gaze forlornly, desperately at one another.

  For how can anyone trust the word of a person who would commit such a heinous crime, there can’t be a worse crime in the book than kidnap. They’re not mad. They’re not deprived. They are cunning, conniving and wicked, they know exactly what they’re doing. Kidnappers ought to be shot. They ought to be slowly tortured first.

  ‘They’re not going to hurt him,’ says Ange, almost to herself, so white that even her lips don’t show, ‘they only want the money.’

  ‘I know,’ says Billy gently.

  ‘Shush… there’s somebody coming,’ says Tina suddenly, open-mouthed and astounded. ‘Up the back stairs. Can’t you hear them?’

  Ange’s eyes open wide, she sits up straight and begins to turn frantically in every direction, looking on both sides and then back, with no idea what she wants to find. Tina sticks a finger in her mouth involuntarily, like a little girl waiting to be punished as they wait for the door to open. ‘It’ll be the police, most likely, searching,’ she says comfortingly. ‘Or maybe Jacob’s found his way back!’

  Honesty tumbles in.

  ‘He is hideous, repellent, possessing some uncanny, revolting power,’ she sobs, ‘and for years I’ve been burdened like this, by my own revolting desire. You must think me so stupid, can you begin to understand? And now I am trying, I am trying the only way I know how, trying to set myself free.’

  This is a side of Honesty which nobody has seen before, nobody save Callister, and she tries to describe their uneasy relationship, sobbing violently while her expression is a mixture of pleading and horror, bubbles form at her nose and mouth and wisps of expensive, silver blonde hair stick to her cheeks.

  ‘… disgusting and unnatural feelings…’ Honesty goes hysterically on.

  With her, very much in her wa
ke, came a pale-complexioned, sandy-haired man with thick, rubbery lips and round glasses, dressed in quite ordinary jeans and a black T-shirt with Bloomingdales printed across the back.

  ‘Police everywhere, behind every tree… must be the crime squad… you must hate me now and I know you’ll hate me and you’re quite right to hate me… oh,’ she wails in a sudden, desperate frenzy, ‘oh God, I hate myself!’

  The young man attempts to pat her arm, but Honesty’s too far gone for well-meaning efforts at communication, abandoned, it would seem, to eternal damnation and despair, recoiling, apparently, even from contact with her own repugnant self. Honesty’s way beyond recovery and so he tries to pick up the threads.

  ‘I’m Giles, you see,’ he says, gradually realising that the name means nothing to his captivated audience of three, and the two children who watch him from their play on the floor with wide, staring eyes. ‘Giles Ormerod, Rufus’s son, until young Archie was born I was to inherit this estate.’

  Angela’s face twists. The muscles and the bones themselves ache from so much crying. This had better be good, this had better have some bearing on the present trauma. She’s not prepared to sit and listen to some mess that Honesty’s been and got herself into. Honesty’s either bewitched or insane, her eyes search desperately around the room for help. Doesn’t she sodding well realise that Angela’s child is missing?

  ‘And Honesty and I were going to get married.’

  ‘Even though I couldn’t stand him!’

  ‘Oh come on, it was never as bad as that,’ says Giles, in his easy American drawl.

  ‘Oh it was, it was, you never knew,’ says Honesty, wringing her hands. ‘I was doing it for Callister. He said that if he had use of the house and grounds and a decent income the world would be his oyster. And you…’ Honesty shoots her attention to Giles, accusing him, blaming him for her present anguish, ‘you went along with it… don’t deny it. I’m not the only one round here to be possessed! And with two fools brainwashed as we were, Callister knew that once Daddy died and he got his hands on Hurleston he would be the power behind the throne.’