Beggar Bride

by Gillian White

  Now Ange has visited this hellish place she knows that anything is possible.

  ‘Even Callister must pay his bills,’ says Giles, the only one of the three able to have a conscious thought and carry it through to any sort of reasonable conclusion. ‘Somewhere in this place there’s going to be a receipt, a letter, a bill, a communication with that phone number on it. D’you know where he’d keep something like that, Honesty? After all, you are the one who provides all his money.’

  Sick and weak, eager to appease, Honesty scans her brain for an answer. ‘He writes his letters in here, there’s more flat surfaces in here, in his van there’s no proper space.’ She’s still thinking. ‘As far as I know he throws his rubbish in the bin under the stove, along with the peelings and waste.’

  With a little scraping of hope now, Ange no longer notices the stench as all three of them tear through the three overflowing bins, damp, soggy stuff, putrid in the heat, crawling with flies which form a kind of furry skin moving over the top. ‘If we don’t find anything here we’ll have to go searching outside…’

  ‘But it seems such a slim chance…’ cries Honesty, retching.

  ‘We’ve nothing else to go on,’ says Giles. ‘If we don’t find this, what else can we do? Wait for Fabian to respond to Callister’s next request? And the one after that? Remember, Callister sees himself as the Great Master, believes he can bow everyone down by the mesmeric force of his personality. He’s not going to give up that easily. I don’t mean to sound so pessimistic but…’

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  They didn’t notice the young boy creeping in after them.

  In his hand is a perfectly pristine, crisp new telephone bill. The number is on the top.

  ‘It’s a bloody miracle.’

  Giles gives a triumphant smack of a fist into the palm of his other hand.

  ‘Oh, thank God, thank God,’ cries Ange. ‘Oh, I’ll never be able to thank you…’

  ‘We’re not there yet by any means,’ Giles reminds her. ‘We’re only just at the start.’

  This poor boy must be eaten up with jealousy. There he is, one minute cohabiting happily with the fascinating Demelza, and the next she is whisked away by the dominating guru. Left on his own in that foetid van, alone with the torment and anguish, he is hardly old enough to cope with these overwhelming feelings, and no wonder…

  ‘You must miss her very much,’ says Ange, pitying him.

  ‘Oh, I do. She’s never gone away before.’

  Her ears are ringing so loudly now that Ange can hardly hear him. ‘At least she left you the phone number.’

  ‘Yes, she did. She worries about me,’ he says softly with some pride in his voice. ‘Demelza is my mother.’

  Why must Billy interfere? Why must he be so impetuous? If only he were more like Fabian. ‘Let Giles do it, Billy, please,’ says Ange, hysterically watching the time. A lump of pain has frozen in her chest. ‘You don’t know Callister. You don’t know how to handle him. They do.’

  They are using Ange’s mobile phone, nobody must use the main line in case the kidnappers try to get through. When they passed through the house on their way upstairs to the nursery, the atmosphere was urgent, tense. Fabian and his secretaries were still in his study trying to make final arrangements. He came out when he heard Ange call. She could see he was distraught. ‘Nearly there,’ he told her, sighing as if he’d run a great race. ‘Please don’t worry. Soon this whole nightmare will be over. Did you manage to get anywhere?’

  ‘We’re trying. We’re trying.’

  ‘I know. I know.’

  Upstairs in the nursery Petal and Archie have picked up the atmosphere and stand beside the phone staring up dumbly at Giles.

  When Giles dials the precious number Ange feels that the whole of her life has been leading up to this moment, and whatever happens afterwards her future will never be the same. Will she ever laugh again? She feels dead, observing these strangers from some other universe, unable to make contact properly through the fug. She might be under water, so wavy are the outlines of the people and the room and all the furniture in it. Billy is so agitated and engrossed he is unaware that he’s clenching his teeth. Tina seems quite paralysed, in a state of trance. Ange can sense Honesty’s profound sorrow and despair, as she watches the phone like a hawk with a vole, knowing, hoping against hope that his voice will answer on the other end.

  Perhaps, after all this, Callister and Demelza don’t even have the phone with them. Have they got Jacob with them? Can her child hear the phone ringing now? Ange feels a mournful nostalgia for life as it was before they ever heard of Fabian Ormerod, for the simple times when all they needed was something to eat and a roof…

  ‘This is Giles Ormerod, Callister, and I’ve got Honesty and Lady Angela here with me now.’

  There’s a pause. Angela trembles and waits. His eyes are slightly narrowed, and she is amazed that Giles can speak with such calm assurance, and then she notices his fists are clenched.

  Oh, thank God, Callister must have answered, he must be willing to listen because Giles is going on saying, ‘I have a few facts here which I think are important for you to have.’

  Don’t let him put his phone down, God. Please keep Callister on the line…

  ‘For a start, the child you have is not Archie Ormerod, but Jacob, his older brother…’

  There must be some protest because Giles presses his lips together and listens.

  ‘Listen to me!’ Giles sounds so firm, so sure of himself. ‘There’s quite a lot you don’t know, Callister, I’m afraid, the main point being that if Fabian realised you were holding a total stranger, not his son at all, he wouldn’t consider offering you one penny. Now please, for your own sake, just give me a few moments before things go too far and everyone loses, you’re not that much of a fool…’

  Ange listens tensely as the whole story of the great deception, as they told it to Giles, as she told it to Fabian earlier, is related over the telephone. Every now and again there’s a pause, and she listens, listens hard to try and catch what Callister is saying, but she can’t, she just watches Giles’ face. Although she sees the strain there, his expression gives nothing away and he speaks with a great solemnity.

  He answers with the lie. ‘No, Fabian knows nothing of this. Not yet…’

  He answers again. ‘Yes, we are prepared to tell him if we don’t hear from Demelza in thirty minutes from now that she has the child safely…’

  And again. ‘Yes, it’s quite hopeless. A perfect description of yourself, yes, to the police, with a description of Demelza as well, the number of the van, this telephone number, everything, Callister.’

  ‘No, there’s absolutely no point, they don’t care about that, they’ve nothing to lose.’

  Giles listens. Giles nods, his eyes moving avidly over the room in fervent concentration. Ange can see with agonising vividness Jacob’s little face gazing up at her, his troubled look, in her head she can hear him chattering, laughing merrily, trying not to betray his fear. ‘I can guarantee that as long as the child, Jacob, is returned safe and sound, that not a word of this will pass anyone’s lips. Is Demelza with you now?’

  Giles demands. ‘Yes, some guarantee that the child has not been harmed…’

  And a frantic, powerless fury begins to beat inside her. Ange can’t stay, she can’t stay here and listen to this for one moment longer.

  When it’s all over it is Billy who comes to find her. She is ashamed of her thoughts. She wants to be with Fabian, she wants to feel his arms around her, so much stronger than Billy’s.

  They stand where they are and confront each other, two small figures passing such priceless information between them. ‘Giles spoke to Demelza…’

  ‘… And?’ Her voice is scarcely audible.

  ‘In thirty minutes from now, that’s four o’clock, she has promised to phone from a public place where we can go and fetch Jacob.’

  Ange stares, searching his face carefully behin
d the obvious sincerity. She still can’t believe it, and feels an intense and violent hatred. ‘Why would an animal like Callister change his mind?’

  ‘Because he’d be mad to carry on now he knows he has been identified.’

  ‘But he is mad. Like Charles Manson. He is as mad as a sodding hatter.’ The shock and relief, the hope she has now is too much to take.

  Billy looks disgusted and shakes his head. ‘Who says madmen aren’t clever, too? Giving up Jacob straight away is his only chance to go free… leave the country perhaps, form a commune somewhere else, taking his wickedness with him.’

  ‘But why didn’t Callister insist on getting the ransom first and then giving Jacob back?’

  ‘Because Giles wouldn’t trust Callister, once he’d been given the money. Giles made it quite clear to Callister there was not one penny on offer. He made him understand that he would tell Fabian the whole truth rather than allow Callister to go free with over a million pounds tucked under his belt. Callister couldn’t really win, when you think about it. It was a matter of giving the child back safe, or facing a life sentence in prison.’

  ‘How does Callister know we won’t go to the police, once we have Jacob?’

  ‘Because Giles gave him his word.’

  ‘What do you think will happen? Tell me honestly, Billy?’

  Billy’s arms go round her with great tenderness. His hands begin to stroke and smooth her tangled black hair. ‘I think, I really, truly think that Jacob is going to be all right, Ange.’

  It is all so complicated. Everything, everything is so suddenly confusing, not at all as it should be. Ange hides her head in her hands and weeps.

  36

  AS ANGE APPROACHES THE social services offices, in the same old three-storeyed house from which they have operated since she first knew them, she gradually slows her steps, watching herself dawdling over the pavement, counting the slabs, avoiding the cracks, and she could be seeing it all through five-year-old eyes again. The same old empty feeling grips her, there’s a wide gutter that runs alongside this road, and those little twigs scurrying down could be the very same she compared her own life with, she used to see them disappear under the road again, and wonder where they were going. Once she wished she was one of them, so she could take her chance and rush off blindly into the vast unknown.

  There had to be something better than this.

  She mounts the stairs, no need for the smiling receptionist to give Angela Harper instructions, she knows the offices and passages and steps in this old house like the back of her hand. She stops outside Sandra Biddle’s office, the name on the door needs retouching… but she supposes the county councils don’t have the sort of money to bother with such inconsequentials now.

  Angela knocks.

  ‘Come in.’ Sandra Biddle, large, dumpy as ever, looks up and smiles, automatically revealing her prominent teeth. ‘I didn’t know we had an appointment this morning, Angela dear.’

  ‘We didn’t.’

  Something in her tone makes the social worker look up. ‘Sit down, dear. Don’t tell me something has gone…’

  The time for game playing is over. ‘It was you who wrote me all those letters,’ says Ange, breathing hard, ‘and signed them Aunty Val. Nobody else could have known all my secrets, not even if they managed to hire a whole firm of private detectives. I want to know when Tina first told you, Sandra, and how did you persuade her to go along with it all? But most of all I need to know why.’

  This might be hard, but Ange will never call life cruel again, not after living through the nightmare of Jacob’s disappearance. Callister was assured enough to be hanging round the west country, Truro, Helston, Newquay, St Austell. On that harrowing Sunday while they waited at Hurleston with their hearts in their mouths, he and Demelza, with Jacob, had even had the audacity to visit St Michael’s Mount and picnic there, so confident was he of a successful conclusion to his despicable plan.

  Giles drove the Range Rover to St Ives. They had to park at the top and walk down the narrow cobbled streets to the harbour pushing through the crowds to reach the Tate Gallery. The gallery was a white and shining structure which looked like a grounded ship which had used its angles and steps to nudge and grind itself into the very cliff face. Demelza had agreed to wait in the open cafe on top, and Ange will never find words to explain her relief at seeing Jacob, sitting there on her knee, happily licking an ice-cream.

  Thank God there was no sign of Callister.

  She left it to Giles to confront Demelza, to discover why such a mild, sweet-natured person would go along with such a diabolical plot. All these protestations of possession and enchantment, this craving for a mighty dominance, left Ange cold, she couldn’t take any more of it. Honesty, back at Hurleston, would be sobbing her heart out even now, believing herself to be on the brink of her own destruction.

  It’s a shame she is so immune to the timid advances of sandy-haired, bespectacled Giles, who is far from the wimp he makes out to be. Perhaps, given time…?

  The sun was still bright in a clear blue sky when she and Billy went and sat on the beach with Jacob, like all the other normal families, the kind she’d always so longed to be, on holiday, relaxing with their children, with the money to buy them lilos and buckets and spades and sandcastle flags, she was unwilling to let Jacob out of her arms for one second. He was bright and cheerful, quite unaware of the danger he’d been in, they hadn’t hurt him and he’d been away such a short time he’d probably not even missed her… oh God, oh God, thank you, God…

  The first thing Fabian did on hearing that Jacob was safely returned was to persuade the law to leave it at that. This took some doing, he needed all his family influence and promises that the whole episode had been nothing but a misunderstanding, an unhappy response from an overworked and over-stressed employee who had since been taken to hospital and sedated, suffering from a nervous breakdown. And yes, the Ormerod family would certainly pay generous compensation for the expensive police operation.

  When the last detective had gone, and carrying Jacob, with Archie tottering alongside, Ange met Fabian again, face to face in his book-lined study. She was agonisingly aware of him watching her with his knowing brown eyes. Their eyes met with an honesty that had never existed between them before.

  She stayed with Fabian, so tall, so powerful, so dark, telling him things, talking about things, for over two hours.

  It was Fabian who insisted she keep the money she had so carefully saved for herself and her family, a respectable amount by now. Ange hadn’t wanted this, she had seen giving back every penny as the only way she could compensate Fabian for some of the wrongs she had done. But he disagreed forcefully.

  The only thing he insisted upon was that they maintain the status quo. ‘I have spoken to Giles about this and he is ashamed of his small role in this abysmal situation. For a while he, like Honesty, was under the influence of that terrible man, Callister, who, by the way, we have now discovered, was born Ryan Bates, and has been a drop-out since childhood. Giles is perfectly aware of the current state of affairs, and content to see Archie inherit Hurleston and all that that entails just as long as Honesty does not suffer in any way from her part in all this.’

  What? This is impossible! ‘You want Archie to inherit?’

  ‘All this is merely practical common sense, Angela.’ Fabian smiled ruefully. He saw the hopeless tears in her eyes and misinterpreted them. If she declared her feelings now he would never, ever believe her. And anyway, what would she say? They are still too new and confused properly to express. ‘You were quite right in your original assumptions. I don’t want the kind of scandalous publicity that this sorry business would undoubtedly attract. I don’t want any of this to come out. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you are my lawful wife, you will carry out such few duties as this title requires, otherwise you will be left to your own devices with your real husband and your two children.’

  Oh no. ‘I can’t leave Archie here, Fabian, I
’m sorry, but I can’t…’

  He looked surprised. ‘I wouldn’t ask that of you. I know how much you care about the children.’

  ‘But his education?’

  ‘That must be left up to you.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t interfere?’

  ‘Only if you needed my help.’

  ‘So me and Billy and Tina and Petal and Archie and Jacob are free to leave Hurleston? Is that what you’re telling me?’ But she didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay here, with him.

  ‘Just as long as you promise me you will keep a low profile, revert to your ordinary married name in everyday life, and just so long, Angela, as we two can remain friends.’

  ‘What can I say?’ She couldn’t even look at him, he shamed her so. She tried. ‘Perhaps in another time, another place? Things could have been so different.’ The only reason they failed in bed was because he was so frightened to trust. She is the last person who can blame him for that. ‘You are amazing, Fabian…’

  ‘Likewise,’ he said. And then he smiled again, as if he knew. ‘Who knows how things might have been, and this arrangement will suit me very well. While everyone believes me to be safely married maybe scheming women like you will, in future, leave me alone.’

  So yes, this might be terrible, but nowhere near as bad as what Ange has been through already.

  ‘Why did you write those awful letters, Sandra? What did you want from me? And when did Tina tell you the truth?’

  Watching the social worker’s broad face crack is like watching a cliff falling into the sea after years of cruel and constant battering. She jerks as she speaks, puppet-like, her words spilling out in a torrent of fury, there is no way, no way she can deny her role.

  To the contrary, she is eager to tell it.

  ‘Tina broke down and blubbed the whole sorry story one day when she was at her lowest. Of course, I knew the truth by then, I had visited Maud Doubleday and realised that by any stretch of the imagination, that woman could not have been my mother. I did some fairly basic digging on my own, discovering quite easily that there was, in fact, this cruel disease, muscular dystrophy, running through Elfrida Ormerod’s family, and from there it wasn’t hard to work out the truth about my birth. The coincidences were too blatant to ignore. Lord and Lady Ormerod have blue eyes, like mine, while Maud’s are brown, like Fabian’s. Whoever heard of two blue-eyed people giving birth to a brown-eyed child? And Lady Elfrida and I share the same heavy build. The midwife in the centre of this was Maud Doubleday’s aunt. Yes, I was born to Elfrida Ormerod and immediately exchanged for the boy Maud gave birth to because it would be preferable.’