The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp

by Sarra Manning

  ‘Tight-fisted old git,’ Matilda said. ‘And I won’t put up with any of that raw food or vegan nonsense either, so we either eat my Ocado delivery or I’ll spend Christmas in Palm Beach.’

  The table was heaped with food the likes of which Becky hadn’t seen since she’d arrived at Queen’s Crawley. Instead of the meagre vegan fare they usually had while Sir Pitt dined on grilled slabs of dead animal, Mrs Tinker had whipped up a delicately seasoned chicken stew with dumplings, freshly made bread positively groaning with gluten, and all manner of side dishes full of cream, butter and other usually verboten ingredients.

  ‘Why does the second wife keep looking at the stew like it’s about to bite her?’ Matilda asked Becky.

  ‘She probably does think it’s going to bite her. “Oh, Becky, I can’t bear to eat no food what comes with a face”,’ Becky said in a tremulous, breathy, note-perfect impersonation of Rosa Crawley.

  ‘Oh! Oh!’ Matilda Crawley clapped her hands together in sheer pleasure, though thankfully Sir Pitt hadn’t heard, as he was too busy hissing at poor Rosa that she wasn’t going to die just from sitting adjacent to a chicken stew. ‘You are a wicked girl. I said to Briggs at the time, that Becky Sharp is a minx if ever there was one. I bet you did say something vile to that horrible girl in the swimming pool when you both had your mikes off, didn’t you? Didn’t you?’

  Becky folded her hands in her lap and smiled primly. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’

  Matilda hooted again. ‘Thank God for you! I didn’t know how I was going to get through Christmas, especially when the rest of the creeping Crawleys descend on us, but I have a feeling that you’ll keep me entertained, at least until Rawdon gets here.’

  ‘Rawdon?’ Becky queried innocently. As if she never read the sidebar of shame assiduously each morning to keep up to date with which leggy model Rawdon was currently dating. As if Sir Pitt never once poured scorn on his second son’s latest antics or acting job. ‘Of course, by the time I was his age, I’d been arrested twice and I’d already played Hamlet and been awarded an Oscar,’ he’d tell Becky every time Rawdon’s name came up. Every. Bloody. Time.

  ‘You know full well who Rawdon is, you little baggage.’ Matilda Crawley tapped Becky on the arm with an arthritic finger. ‘My darling boy. He’s the only one of them I can stand, but you’ll do very well in the meantime.’

  *

  The rest of the Crawleys soon descended in short order, and by the night before Christmas Eve, they were all gathered in Queen’s Crawley, preparing for the first festive meal en famille.

  ‘We’re only here to see Aunt Matilda,’ Pitt Junior informed his father as they gathered for pre-dinner drinks. ‘Otherwise we’d have spent Christmas with Jane’s parents. They’ve just had solar panels and triple glazing installed. Not to mention some decent grub. Last time we were here, the chick peas gave me indigestion for days.’

  ‘Oh, do pipe down, boy,’ Sir Pitt scowled and Pitt Junior scowled right back at him. Poor Pitt Junior was an inferior tenth-generation copy of his father. As if someone had scanned Sir Pitt’s face so many times that only traces of him could be glimpsed on his son’s fleshy face, while the rest of Pitt Junior was blurry and indistinct. Even the famous, luxuriant Crawley hair that Sir Pitt loved to sweep back from his face had missed Pitt Junior, whose hairline was receding quicker than the English coastline. Pitt the Younger was thirty-five and had quickly realised that the acting life was not for him. Nor was holding down any kind of a regular job, so he styled himself as a writer and every now and again managed to persuade The Spectator or The New Statesman to publish one of his long, meandering pieces on the division between church and state or male feminism. He’d also managed to persuade a very dull young woman called Jane to date him and the pair of them now lived in a flat in Finchley, and apart from the annual Christmas visit they had very little to do with Sir Pitt.

  Pitt Junior retreated to a corner to lick his wounds and gaze around the drawing room, looking for any darker spots on the walls, which signalled that his father had sold another painting. His mother, God rest her soul, had collected art and instead of handing her collection over to her two sons, her father had kept it while it increased in value, then would sell a painting off whenever he was short of ready funds.

  Pitt Junior would probably have stayed in the corner sulking if it weren’t for a young woman with red hair, mesmerising green eyes and a shy smile approaching him. ‘I’m Becky, the nanny,’ she said, twisting her hands in front of her as if she were nervous. ‘Hope you don’t mind consorting with the help.’

  As the help was employed to look after the five cuckoos who had thrown him out of the Crawley nest and had drastically decreased his inheritance, Pitt Junior did mind a little. ‘Not at all,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘It’s just … I bet you get this all the time …’ Downcast eyes and a hesitant manner wouldn’t have worked on Matilda Crawley but they had quite the opposite effect on her nephew, who felt something stirring in his chest. ‘Well, I’m a big fan of your writing. Huge fan. Loved the piece you wrote last week for the Observer Review on the death of the novel. You should write a novel,’ Becky added, eyes now wide as if she was slightly shocked by her own audacity.

  And with those four sentences Pitt Junior became a big fan of Becky Sharp. ‘Oh, that’s very kind. But I’m just a humble wordsmith, a jobbing hack, at the mercy of my muse. Though, well … can I let you into a little secret?’

  Becky sidled closer so Pitt Junior could smell the apple scent of her shampoo. ‘I’ll take it to the grave,’ she breathed in his ear and he closed his eyes for a scant second just to gather himself. He was very fond of Jane but she’d never caused Pitt Junior to have to take a second to gather himself.

  ‘I am working on a novel,’ Pitt Junior revealed in a hushed tone and then he wished he hadn’t said anything, because he’d been working on his novel for years and all he had to show for it were three very inferior drafts and expulsion from his writers’ group after an argument with a Faber Academy graduate who had called it ‘post-colonial porn’.

  ‘Oh goodness. I’d love to read it,’ Becky assured him and she was so close now that not even one of Mrs Tinker’s cheese straws could have passed between them.

  ‘You really wouldn’t,’ Pitt Junior said a little sadly and he wished that he could be more like his father, or like Rawdon, who believed absolutely in their own greatness and wouldn’t countenance anyone who didn’t.

  The little nanny, she really was a sweet thing, lightly touched his hand. ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you this but Sir Pitt is so proud of you. He reads every single piece of yours and then we discuss them together.’

  ‘He does?’

  ‘Oh yes, absolutely.’ It wasn’t a lie. When Sir Pitt wasn’t orating his memoirs he’d often read out his second son’s latest piece in a mincing voice for Becky’s amusement, with added commentary. (‘I don’t have a bloody clue what the silly boy is wittering on about.’)

  ‘Thank you,’ Pitt Junior said fervently and Becky’s little hand was still resting on his, so he gently squeezed her fingers. ‘Goodness, I never imagined that he showed any interest in me or my ridiculous scribbles.’

  ‘They’re not ridiculous, Pitty,’ said a shocked voice from behind them and they turned to see Jane, Pitt’s long-term, long-suffering girlfriend standing there with a bright, brittle smile to mask her hurt that Pitt Junior still wouldn’t put a ring on it, even though it had been years, and now here he was, holding hands with a very pretty, very young woman. ‘Your articles are well-written and astute. We’ve been through this. I’m Jane, by the way, and you are …?’

  Becky summed up the decidedly average Jane Sheepshanks in one swift, sweeping glance that took in her mousy hair, round face and size-twelve figure, right down to her Russell & Bromley dress flats in black patent leather, topped off with a contrasting red velvet bow. If you cut Jane’s head off then the words ‘Home Counties’ would run through her like a sti
ck of rock. She was pleasant, sturdy, middle-class stock, her parents were doctors or solicitors and she’d gone to the local grammar school where she’d worked diligently for a steady B grade and excelled at sports. She had probably gone to a fairly decent university to study something that would get her a fairly decent job on a fairly decent income, but she yearned to be wild and Bohemian. Yet living with Pitt Junior (‘Oh yes, he’s related to those Crawleys, Sir Pitt is actually his father but we try to keep that on the downlow’) and supplementing his freelance wages with her salary as Head of Marketing at a company that specialised in green energy was as free-spirited as Jane got. She did try to have a creative side, but it was hard work.

  Becky, however, spotted it right away.

  ‘I’m Becky, I’m just the nanny,’ she said vaguely, her eyes fixed on the knitted corsage pinned to Jane’s little black dress, which had left a residue of red fluff on her bodice. ‘That flower you’re wearing. It’s so pretty. Did you make it yourself?’

  Jane felt the same stirrings as Pitt had in her heart, which swelled with pride that someone in this house, even if it were just the nanny, had said something kind to her. Saw her as more than ‘that horribly plebeian girlfriend of Pitt Junior’s. She’s so jolly hockey-sticks. Reminds me of my old games mistress’ – which was how she’d just heard Matilda Crawley describe her to Briggs.

  ‘I did make it,’ Jane squeaked. ‘I love to knit. I think everyone should have a creative outlet.’

  ‘I don’t have a creative bone in my body,’ Becky said with a wistful sigh, because telling outrageous lies didn’t really count. ‘You’re so clever.’

  ‘I could teach you to knit, it’s very easy. If I can do it, anyone can,’ Jane offered eagerly and Becky nodded a lot less eagerly, but was then saved by Sir Pitt who wasn’t at all happy that his little Becky was looking at young Pitt and his dreary girlfriend with the same rapt attention she usually gave him.

  It was quite the happy family as the Crawleys sat down to dinner that night. That is, apart from poor Rosa, who was terrified to open her mouth because Matilda and Briggs would roll their eyes at everything she said, and Bute and Martha Crawley, who were positively vibrating with silent yet deep rage at one end of the table.

  Bute Crawley, next in line between Matilda and Sir Pitt, would forever be furious that while his older sister and younger brother had been garnished with stardust, he’d had to languish in obscurity as a character actor. The pinnacle of his career was playing a Gestapo officer, Herr Shirt, in a BBC WW2 comedy sitcom about the Resistance in occupied Belgium, Good Moaning, which had run for several years during the eighties. He was now reduced to bit parts in police procedurals (he’d been in Midsomer Murders an unprecedented eight times) and teaching the glorious art of acting to A-level performance art students who all called him Herr Shirt, because Good Moaning was endlessly repeated on UK Gold.

  His wife, Martha, was even more furious than her husband. She’d thought she was marrying into one of Britain’s premier acting families and ended up with the runt of the litter. Yet, in her way, she was devoted to Bute. His disappointments were her disappointments. His rejections cut her to the very quick. The bitterness might have been jollied out of him if he’d married a more agreeable sort of woman, but under Martha’s tender ministrations it had been left to fester and simmer.

  Although Becky had vowed to make herself indispensable to every Crawley and Crawley dependent that crossed her path, one glance told her she could do nothing with Bute and Martha. They were perfectly content to be a malcontent presence in the house. They glowered and seethed and muttered furiously at each other and Becky decided that in their own vicious, miserable way they were happy and it was best to steer clear of them.

  The gathering hadn’t even finished with the soup course or Matilda’s amusing account of how she landed the lead in the play that transformed her from Hollywood superstar to the greatest actress of her generation (‘and then I said to my agent, “Get Alan on the phone. No, not Bennett, Ayckbourn”’), when they all heard a commotion in the hall outside.

  The sound of something heavy falling to the floor, the crash of china, a squeal from one of the girls who’d come up from the village to help out, then the dining-room door crashed back on its hinges and a figure appeared in the doorway.

  He was tall and lean, dressed in tight jeans, a tight black T-shirt and a black leather jacket. The exquisite yet rugged beauty of his face was obscured by a large pair of shades, even though he was indoors and it was past eight thirty on a winter’s night. He ran long fingers through his thick, unruly mane of dark hair, in a manner that was very familiar to the assembled company.

  Becky knew who it was even before Dame Matilda said with quiet joy, ‘My darling boy’s come home.’

  Rawdon Crawley, for it couldn’t be anyone else, finally removed his sunglasses to reveal brilliant-blue but bloodshot eyes. It was as if he came with an electrical charge, which sparked with every movement he made, no matter how slight, so that when he was on stage or even playing second lead in a movie, all eyes were on him. As they were now.

  He smiled a perfectly crooked smile and threw open his arms. ‘Happy fucking Christmas, everyone!’

  Chapter 13

  The next morning, Christmas Eve, Becky lay on the floor of the nursery, which was stuck at the end of a long hallway on the second floor where no one of any interest ever ventured, and tried really hard not to scream.

  All her threats, all her bribes, even promises of violence were having no effect on the five little Crawleys who had reached peak Christmas hysteria even though they were still a day away from the main event. Even the very littlest one, Artemis, who was usually quite well behaved, had perfected an ear-perforating shriek this morning that was working Becky’s last nerve.

  ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ she growled but none of them paid her any attention apart from the middle one, Thisbe, who hurled himself at Becky’s chest, and once he’d landed decided to bounce on her. ‘Get off me, you little shit.’

  ‘Santa won’t bring you any presents if you say shit,’ he informed her while his two eldest siblings ran in circles around them singing ‘Let It Go’ at the very top of their vocal register.

  ‘Newsflash, Santa doesn’t even exist,’ Becky hissed and she looked little Thisbe right in the eye as his mouth fell open. ‘Yup, not real. I mean, how stupid do you have to be to think some fat bloke is going to be able to break into every person’s house in the whole country in the space of a few hours?’

  ‘But … but … magic?’ Thisbe offered hopefully.

  ‘No such thing,’ Becky said and his bottom lip began to wobble alarmingly and at least he’d stopped bouncing, but if he was going to start crying and add to the already deafening racket, then it wasn’t really a win. ‘If you cry, I’m going to tell Tinker that you’re only to have gluten-free toast and soy spread for lunch. No fish fingers for you.’

  It was no use. The first fat tears were leaking out of his eyes and as Thisbe opened his mouth to unleash hell, the nursery door crashed back on its hinges. A figure stood poised in the doorway.

  ‘Hello, brats! Come and give your big brother some loving!’

  Rawdon Crawley lived to make an entrance and rarely was his audience as adoring as his five little half-siblings, who gawped at him for one blissfully silent moment then erupted into a series of squeaks, squeals and squawks as they moved like one many-limbed creature to swarm all over him.

  Who would have thought that Hollywood’s hottest hell-raiser would have the softest and sweetest spots for the five children of his father’s second wife? Becky watched in amazement as Rawdon crouched down to their level so he could scoop them all up in a hug, laughing as his hair was tugged in all directions and Artemis wiped her very snotty nose on the sleeve of his tracksuit top.

  For Hollywood’s hottest hell-raiser was wearing a baggy grey tracksuit that was too baggy and too grey to even count as post-ironic fashion.

  ‘Nice outfit,’
Becky said when the children’s volume knob had come down from eleven to about six. ‘I think I saw something similar on the Paris runways.’

  Last night, it had seemed as if Rawdon had looked everywhere but at her. Mostly he’d had eyes only for his aunt Matilda, who’d tersely ordered Sir Pitt out of his chair so she could seat her beloved next to her.

  So now when he looked at Becky, it was as if they were meeting for the first time. Their eyes locked, both of them determined not to blink. Becky was still lying on the threadbare rug in the centre of the room but she raised herself up on her elbows, which did wonderful things to her breasts, and wouldn’t drop her gaze.

  Or couldn’t.

  Compared to Jos Sedley or even Sir Pitt, who when he was suited and booted was handsome in a distinguished sort of way, Rawdon was like the rarest of fillet steaks after first trying a meat substitute, then a tough old piece of rump that was more gristle than anything else.

  ‘I’m going incognito,’ Rawdon said in reply. Becky had already forgotten what she’d said, she was so riveted by the sight of six feet two inches of box-office bad boy in the nursery.

  ‘You what?’ she muttered.

  ‘I’m taking the brats out to buy their Christmas presents,’ Rawdon said, scooping up two of them and holding them by their ankles while they whooped with delight. ‘You’re coming too. I can’t wrangle all five of them on my own.’

  Becky gave him her best gimlet gaze. Not even Sir Pitt dared to order her around like that. ‘Say please.’

  Rawdon batted his ludicrously long eyelashes at Becky. ‘Please,’ he drawled.

  They piled into Matilda Crawley’s stately Rolls Royce Silver Phantom, despite Briggs’ protests, and drove off with an awful crunching of the gears.

  It would have been perfect if there hadn’t been five children crammed into the back seat, all talking at once, and if Rawdon Crawley hadn’t ignored Becky entirely and addressed all his remarks to his brattish half-siblings.