Chain Reaction

by Gillian White

  She stumbles and almost falls at the door. ‘But I’ve never even kissed another man…’

  ‘Get out, get out!’ Oh God forgive me!

  Later, when he comes to find her and she cuddles in close, she can feel the shudder where his sobs have been. He does need her. He really does!

  TEN

  No fixed abode

  A PRINCESS-IN-WAITING. The silver choker round her slender neck makes her look almost regal.

  ‘Jamie doesn’t know about any of this, be honest with me, does he? It’s Them who are doing this to me, isn’t it—sending me off into exile?’

  So Dougal Rathbone protests, ‘I’m afraid that Jamie does know, Arabella, and is a hundred per cent behind the course we are taking. “They”, as you refer to them, don’t know a thing about it.’

  ‘Well, I won’t believe that till I see Jamie and he tells me himself.’

  Dougal shakes his head dubiously. Powerful behind the wheel of his gold Mercedes convertible, he has finally persuaded Arabella to accompany him to the wilds of Lancashire to view the property in question. The bribe, if you like. He knows what he would do if he was offered such a property—he’d jump at it. The potential of the place is enormous. The girl beside him is pretty and sweet-smelling like an English rose, dressed quite simply in dainty florals. Her silver-blonde hair, drawn back from her peachy face with two combs, curls naturally to her shoulders. Even if Dougal were straight it would be hard to view her in a sexual way because of the innocence about her. During the journey this sophisticated and worldly young man is stunned to realise exactly how naive this mother-to-be appears. She started off in her childish voice by relating her morning’s horoscope: ‘Keep your counsel today, it will pay you off in the end for it is to and from this day that all future rivers will flow.’ She turned to Dougal. ‘Weird! Really spooky. So what do you think about that?’

  ‘You believe that sort of rubbish?’

  She is glad to leave the hot grey dust of London behind her. ‘Naturally,’ she says, drawing clean air into her lungs. ‘I thought everyone did, at heart. They might pretend they don’t but they do really.’

  And another shock to the system came when she suddenly exclaimed, clasping her bangled hands together, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was just allowed to love each other?’

  Oh God! Barbara Cartland. Dougal stared intently at the road and found himself unable to answer. Was she subnormal or what? He must have a long and realistic discussion with this young lady tonight.

  Peaches has been over-protected. Mummy and Daddy live in a gorgeous Georgian house fronting the road in Epping. Apparently Arabella has no relatives up north, has never been there and seems to regard it in the context of the historical romances she reads, all moorlands and russet skies, revolting rabbles in clogs and braces and broken factories peeping out from sooty, cobblestoned towns.

  ‘Well, you are going to be pleasantly surprised,’ Dougal reassures her, searching for a decent hotel where they can have a leisurely lunch, and if he can get a fair quantity of wine down her pretty little throat perhaps her perceptions will be lightened further. Tonight they are staying in a country hotel before attempting the return journey in the morning.

  Dougal is a nice kind man, thinks Arabella, the sort of person she imagines Jamie might be close to, not the loud assortment of young men he was with when they were first introduced. He is the sort of brotherly type she feels she could confide in, but his attitude surprises her. Perhaps the fun-loving Jamie is playing some game, luring her to a secret love-nest to surprise her on her arrival. She wouldn’t put anything past him, knowing him as she does. He’s a joker. Posing as a motorbike freak on his precious Harley Davidson, that’s how he always approached his Little Venice hideaway, his neighbours on the river never saw him without his helmet and goggles. It is perfectly ghastly how her sweet, sensitive young lover is misrepresented by the press. Anyone would think they were conducting a private vendetta against him. But he’s so brave, he merely laughs and says they know no better. If they attacked Arabella like that, following her round, quizzing her friends, setting her up with their intrusive lenses, if they treated her as meanly as that she would be completely destroyed.

  But look at her now. She has to admit that all this is rather exciting. Arabella Brightly-Smythe had lived a quiet and protected life carefully monitored by a loving family until she started sharing the flat in Queensway with her two school chums, Charlie and Mags. ‘You will be all right now, darling, won’t you,’ asked Mummy, kissing her goodbye and looking worried. Arabella was launched into the big wide world on the day she unpacked her bags and laid her old brown teddy bear, Beppo, on the frilly pillow in her room. At first she couldn’t quite believe it, all the excitement, the glamour, the places to go, the friends they knew. She felt a sense of rebirth. She went a little bit dotty at first, she supposes, but then she met Jamie and has never looked back.

  She hasn’t seen him for two weeks now and there’s no point going to the houseboat. It’s kept locked and chained with a watch on it at all times. Oh, the overwhelming pain of this love and the terrible joy of it.

  ‘Perhaps I ought to be swathed in veils,’ she says to Dougal lightly, ‘like poor Mrs Simpson.’

  She daren’t tell Mummy and Daddy about the baby, not until she has at least an engagement ring on her finger; they would be so disappointed in their only daughter. Nor dare she confess to Charlie or Mags. They would be on Jamie’s side and try to persuade her to have an abortion. Neither of her flatmates sees Jamie through her own loving eyes; both of them have tried hard to warn her against him. They don’t try any more because the only result is that poor Arabella flies weeping to her bedroom and refuses to come out.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t say these terrible unkind things, not when you don’t know him!’

  She has to admit that Jamie disappointed her with his response to her pregnancy, something that filled her with joy and delight, a condition she has looked forward to since childhood, to be a mother and a wife. But when he saw how disturbed she was he became his old gentle self again. ‘Come on, old thing, dry your eyes. If you want the baby of course you should have it, only it is going to be frightfully tricky in the circs.’

  ‘In the circs?’

  ‘Bearing in mind who I am, silly.’

  ‘But you are my Prince and you love me, don’t you?’

  Jamie gave a half-smile. He ruffled her hair and climbed out of the messy bed. She couldn’t see his expression, or hear what he was saying to himself over the noise of the shower in the bathroom. She thought he was probably singing. The fact that they met on his sacred houseboat said something about how important she had become to him.

  ‘I do hope it’s a girl,’ she called. ‘Mummy is going to be terribly thrilled.’

  He can’t have heard her because he didn’t shout back a reply.

  He came back smelling of an exotic manhood. Expensive. Sultry, of deserts and temples. His chest was broad and shiny with a few blond hairs wisping out of the centre in a sweet soft line that led down to his pubes. He was clean, golden and soft-spoken; his towel-damp curls hung over his forehead forcing him to peer through with his soft brown amber-flecked eyes. With a gesture both lordly and casual he flicked it back and kissed her.

  She wanted to be one with him, man and wife made flesh.

  He stroked her forehead with his finger, moving it meticulously around her face and over her eyelids so she felt hypnotised by the sensation. ‘Fact of the matter is, old fruit, that it’s not going to be quite as straightforward as you seem to think.’

  ‘Love will conquer all,’ moaned Arabella softly, ‘and I really believe that, Jamie, don’t you? Isn’t it a miracle that we found one another out of all the millions and billions of people in the world, isn’t it wonderful?’ And she stretched out in all her nakedness, flooded with perfect happiness.

  Some people would say that Arabella has led a charmed life and she would have to agree with them. I mean, Mr and
Mrs Brightly-Smythe are still together, not even separated like most of the middle-aged people she knows. Her two young brothers, Garth and Cedric, are bright and healthy and doing well at school, specially at games. Both sets of grandparents are still alive. Sometimes she worries that it’s all been rather too charming and that one day something really awful will happen, someone will die or get ill, or they’ll lose all their money or the house might burn down and take all their magical childhood things with it. But then she reassures herself, because although you are always reading about the terrible things that happen, they do tend to happen to other people, a certain type of person, and in her heart of hearts she wonders whether some people don’t actually attract these disasters.

  ‘I suppose they have someone special lined up for you already,’ Arabella joked to Jamie as he sat admiring her on the side of the bed.

  ‘That would seem to be the case, yes.’

  ‘Oh Jamie! You are a fool! Even I know that whoever you are these days, you are allowed to choose your own partner. It’s no longer the Dark Ages. You’re not poor Princess Margaret. Nor are you first in line to the throne and your parents seem to be frightfully nice…’

  Jamie’s laughter interrupted her gregarious flow. ‘How the hell would you know?’

  ‘Well, of course I know, silly. I can read, can’t I? I watch television. I was even invited to a garden party once, with Mummy. You should have seen our marvellous hats. But I must admit I didn’t see Her, although we were told She was there.’

  His smile was crooked, only half his mouth moved into it. ‘I don’t believe you. I truly don’t believe you. You are just too much!’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean, Jamie.’

  ‘Oh, never mind. Forget it.’

  He rarely talked about his older brothers, George, the heir to the throne, grave and shy, just married to a Princess of Denmark, and Rupert the sporty one two years younger. She sometimes wondered whether he was actually happy at home, wherever home really was, they moved about so often. They didn’t seem to have much family life but then it’s so difficult for Them, isn’t it? Always in the limelight. After all, their bond is probably stronger than blood alone. So many disguises. Sometimes it’s dark glasses and a wig. He always gives a false name if he is ever asked and says he is of no fixed abode, like a tramp, poor thing.

  Everyone at school had a crush on James Henry Albert, by far the most attractive of the Queen’s three children. If it wasn’t Agassi pinned on the wall above the bed in the dorm it was him, decked out on a horse in all his splendour, or striding across the moors in a deer-stalker with a gun over his manly shoulder. Arabella longs to tell her secret to some of those old friends of hers; she keeps in touch with most of them by letter or meeting in town occasionally for a coffee or a salad to chew over the good old days. She longs to see their reaction, those Janets and Jillies and Judies with whom she shared so many windy hours on the lacrosse pitch, or down by the tennis courts dreaming and gossiping. Gosh. How they will envy her when they know! And he’s so much sweeter than any of them had imagined.

  When she first met him at the wine bar in Maida Vale he told her his name was Wayne.

  And what is more—she believed him. Called him Wayne for a week and talked about motorbikes until it slowly dawned on her that the young travel agent in the horn-rimmed glasses who so resembled the Prince was actually Him Himself. Their eyes were the first physical parts to meet, meaningfully, across the proverbial crowded room, causing Peaches to come close to swooning. It only took one week for the rest of themselves to be introduced, and yes, yes, everything about him is as powerful as his eyes were then.

  ‘So when are you going to tell Them?’ she asked, cuddling into him like a fluffy toy. She loved the way he wrapped himself around her.

  ‘You’ll have to give me time, old horse,’ he told her seriously. ‘This is a grave matter.’

  ‘Oh yes, it is grave,’ said Arabella pouting. She didn’t like the word ‘grave’; it reminded her too much of death.

  ‘They might be rather taken aback.’

  ‘Because I’m just a commoner?’

  ‘Yes, probably.’

  ‘They’ll have to look into my background, I suppose. All that takes time. And what about the love affair I had before I met you?’ Arabella flushed and started to panic. ‘What if that counts against me?’

  ‘Well,’ Jamie said slowly, ‘that is a possibility.’

  ‘But it didn’t mean a thing, honestly, Jamie!’

  ‘Well, I know that. But I am supposed to marry a virgin so that nobody can tell tales, and Tom was a bit of a playboy…’

  ‘Yes, I know, Mummy warned me. She didn’t approve of him at all. Thought he was leading me into temptation but he was always perfectly sweet to me.’

  ‘I’m sure he was,’ mused Jamie, ‘but your relationship with him is certainly a factor they would want to take into account.’

  ‘Perhaps I should give up my job, go into purdah so I don’t offend anyone before it all starts to happen?’

  ‘No, no, don’t do that.’ Jamie was most insistent that she go on with her life just as if nothing had happened. ‘There’s loads of time for that, old bean. You won’t start showing for weeks, and people might get suspicious.’

  ‘You are quite right, of course.’ And secretly Arabella was glad. She loves her job at Habitat, enjoys the companionship and the stuff they sell and the fun of unpacking a new delivery, and everyone likes her. And what would she do if she did give up work? She cannot imagine hiding away in the flat all day, and it would be rather premature to move into the Palace.

  So when Dougal Rathbone came round with the brochure on the Grange she was startled at first, undermined, wondering whatever was happening. I mean, Clitheroe—what sort of a place was that? However, a second meeting made her see that there was something afoot. Jamie was trying to smooth the pathway so the big announcement would be easier. After all, if she stayed in London she would be a prisoner hounded by the press and They would probably want the wedding to take place as quickly as possible.

  It wouldn’t look too good, would it, if she had to heave herself down the aisle heavily pregnant, clutching her back and unable to kneel without toppling over. Giving up the job, she supposed, as Dougal was now suggesting, was unfortunate but just the first of the many sacrifices one must be prepared to make when marrying a Royal. Arabella would just have to accept it.

  Thank goodness she’s over her morning sickness.

  ‘I hate lying to Charlie and Mags,’ she confides to Dougal when they set off on the second leg of the journey, having wined and dined in a glorious setting in an hotel among the trees beside a lake. She shouldn’t have drunk quite so much. She is not used to drinking at lunchtime but Dougal was so persuasive and the wine was delicious. He didn’t touch a drop, she noticed with relief. That was the trouble with Jamie. He thought he could drink and drive and he was so fast and reckless, she hated travelling anywhere with him, always ended up feeling sick. ‘They have been such super friends to me. I told them we were visiting some relatives of yours in the Lake District. They were surprised. They keep asking about Jamie, of course, and it’s terribly difficult to deceive them. After all, they, of all people, know how I feel about him.’

  They are cruising along in companionable silence through a landscape browned by the sun. A silver tremor runs over the hills like a happy little sigh which matches her mood. She thinks she can hear the birds singing, and even the cows munching in the distance make a chewy sound in her ears. She is in love and in tune with the whole wide world. In a few hours she will see Jamie! Arabella glances at Dougal but his expression is giving nothing away, not so she can notice. How long will he carry on the deception? Is he going to tell her about the surprise waiting at the end of the journey, or will Jamie show her himself? This is all so terribly exciting!

  ‘I even practise my wave,’ she confesses, smiling and feeling silly but Dougal is the sort of person you feel you can trust with
anything, ‘in front of the mirror! Don’t laugh. I know it’s just playing with a dream but this dream is about to come true. And a gracious smile, whatever that might be. I want to get everything exactly right.’

  Dougal compresses his lips. The little fool. She’s going to take one hell of a tumble. ‘Arabella, I think you are being a trifle over-romantic about all this…’

  ‘Oh, you don’t need to tell me!’ cries Arabella, her voice rising dramatically. ‘I know the job isn’t all romance and flowers. I know it involves sacrifices and hardships. I understand what a strain it must be, I have thought a great deal about it.’

  ‘I am sure you have,’ says Dougal, now decidedly uneasy.

  She must control her vivid imagination. She must not be so selfish. Perhaps poor Jamie won’t be there, after all. Perhaps he couldn’t get away or feels it is too dangerous, even here, in this bleak and windswept part of the world, to break cover and reveal too much to his mother’s unsuspecting subjects. Waiting eyes, sun glinting on long-distance lenses. Well, she’ll put a brave face on it and be patient. She will go along with all this and give her opinion on the Grange which is what is expected of her today; she won’t make things any more complicated for Them than they already are. This is the least she can do, after all, for her future husband, for the man she loves more than life itself.

  ELEVEN

  Flat 1, Albany Buildings, Swallowbridge, Devon

  MISS BENSON IS NOT even slightly shocked when she first sets foot in Greylands because the home where her own mother died not three years ago was depressingly similar. Funny how you’re upset by things that threaten you most… It’s like those women who shriek outside the courts—they are the ones who most nearly batter their kids, or the anti-abortion campaigners who are the ones least likely to sympathise with fallen women.