The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp

by Sarra Manning

  Which was fine. If that was the game that Rawdon wanted to play, then Becky would ignore him too. They ignored each other all the way to Southampton and the big toy superstore on the outskirts of town.

  ‘Isn’t this exciting?’ Becky exclaimed to the children as they tumbled out of the car. ‘And it’s so kind of Santa to ask your big brother to help him with your presents. Apparently, Santa’s been so busy this year that the elves in the workshop went on strike over their bad working conditions.’

  Thisbe pulled his finger out of his nose. ‘You said Santa didn’t exist.’

  ‘I did not,’ Becky said, digging her fingers into Thisbe’s shoulder as she marshalled them through the car park, painfully aware of Rawdon, slouching behind them with a baseball cap pulled down low over his face. Becky put an extra little swing in her hips just in case he wasn’t completely ignoring her. ‘What I said was that little children who tell lies don’t get any presents.’

  ‘That’s not what you—’

  ‘Look, Thisbe, I don’t make the rules.’ Becky pulled them through the automatic doors into the ninth layer of hell: the biggest toy superstore on the south coast at eleven forty-five on the morning of Christmas Eve.

  Two hours, five meltdowns and one awkward moment (when Artemis pulled down her pants and decided to do a wee right in the middle of aisle seventeen) later, they were camped out in McDonalds.

  The children were hopped up on full-fat Coke and involved in very tense negotiations about swapping their Happy Meal toys with each other. Every time Artemis emitted her new high-pitched shriek, Rawdon would flinch and huddle deeper into his hoodie.

  ‘Artemis, I swear, if you make that noise again, you’re going to wake every bat within a fifty-mile radius,’ Rawdon said at last as the negotiations hit a wall and Thisbe hit Phaedra over the head with an empty Happy Meal box.

  ‘All those toys we just bought are going back if you don’t pack it in right now,’ Becky growled, her temper now frayed to the very edge. She glanced surreptitiously at Rawdon, but he didn’t so much as blink at her sudden change in tone. In fact, for just the merest microsecond, she could swear she saw the faintest glimmer of a smile quirk his lips.

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ Calliope stated doubtfully.

  Becky pointed at her own grim expression. ‘Look at my face. Does this look like the face of someone who’s joking?’

  It didn’t. It looked like the face of someone who had shown the five Crawley children, time and time again, that she could give with one hand and snatch back with the other if they dared to displease her.

  Like someone had pressed a cosmic mute button, the five of them settled back in their seats with some low-level grumbling. Rawdon shrugged and turned to look out of the window at the non-moving row of cars trying to leave the retail park.

  Becky sighed. He would be back in LA the first chance he got, so she might as well take this little opportunity to appreciate him on a purely aesthetic level. Because even in grey marl cotton with a Manchester United baseball cap obscuring a lot of his face, including his piercing, blue eyes, Rawdon Crawley was an absolute joy to behold.

  But a little opportunity was still an opportunity. Rawdon Crawley was a new plan B and far more pleasing to the eye and entertaining company than Jos Sedley had ever been. If he was planning on disappearing at the earliest opportunity, which would be Boxing Day, then Becky would have to make her play sooner rather than later, even though she much preferred a long con. She absolutely could not screw this up.

  Did she play the feisty reality-TV runner-up? The angelic nanny? The acerbic Becky Sharp who’d survived on her wits ever since she could remember?

  Becky decided to go with (d) all of the above.

  ‘I never showed you what I got Matilda,’ Rawdon suddenly said as Becky was still deciding on her first move. He hefted up one of the carrier bags and delved inside. ‘Do you think she’ll like this?’

  This was a toy pug, wearing a pink jumper and a malevolent expression.

  ‘That is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen,’ Becky said honestly. There was no way to put a positive spin on the hideous beast. ‘It’s not too late to take it back.’

  ‘I would rather have rectal surgery without an anaesthetic than step back in that fucking shop,’ Rawdon said cheerfully, though Calliope gave him a stern look.

  ‘Don’t say fucking,’ she said primly. ‘It’s rude.’

  ‘It is,’ Rawdon agreed, then he picked up the pug and waggled one of its paws at Becky, who stared back at him, eyebrows raised. ‘Trust me, she’ll love this. When I was a kid, she had a pug called Stanley, who was completely lacking in any kind of charisma. He’d just wheeze and fart a lot. Matilda always said that she’d have got more companionship if she’d killed him and had him stuffed. This will put a smile on her face.’

  ‘Really? Are you sure that it won’t just send her over the edge?’ Becky peered at Rawdon over the rim of her coffee cup.

  ‘Matilda loves a tacky gag gift and she needs cheering up …’ Rawdon tailed off, then leaned in close. ‘Can I trust you with a secret?’

  ‘I’ll take it to the grave,’ she promised, her eyes wide, her face solemn.

  Rawdon leaned even closer so that Becky could see that where his face wasn’t obscured by baseball cap or stubble, he had perfect, unblemished skin. Not a single open pore. ‘They’re killing her off in the Lyndon Place Christmas Special.’

  Interesting. ‘Oh?’

  ‘If we end up watching it tomorrow, will you act surprised when it happens but also don’t make too much fuss about it? There’s no way that Matilda would let herself be killed off unless the part was too demanding for her, and she’d hate for people to think that she wasn’t well.’ When Rawdon talked about Matilda, his face, even his voice, softened like someone had taken a rubber and smoothed out all his hard edges. ‘She did a whole fortnight as Desdemona with walking pneumonia.’

  That was interesting too. Next to her, Thisbe had started swinging his legs, kicking Becky on each backstroke, which she quelled with just one look, then turned back to Rawdon – he didn’t have a ring of encrusted snot around each nostril, for one thing.

  ‘You know, Hollywood hell-raisers aren’t meant to be like this. Kind, caring …’

  Rawdon smiled the crooked, lazy smile that had launched a thousand teenage dreams. ‘You obviously haven’t met many Hollywood hell-raisers.’

  ‘Well, no, they are quite thin on the ground in Mudbury,’ Becky conceded.

  ‘It might not be “cool” to admit it, but I love Matilda. When Mum died and it was obvious that Pitt wasn’t going to step up, she took care of me. Paid for me to go to Eton …’

  Becky nearly snorted in weary derision. Why was it that every man she’d met since she’d left the Big Brother house had been to Eton? It was a cabal. A conspiracy. An exclusive club that Becky could never hope to enter. Not even because she’d dragged herself up from the gutters of Soho, but because, last time she checked, Eton didn’t admit girls as pupils.

  Meanwhile Rawdon was still misty-eyed about his favourite aunt.

  ‘… She also put me through RADA, because Pitt wasn’t going to pay for anything that might mean that I’d one day take the spotlight off him.’ Rawdon smiled in a deprecating fashion. ‘My therapist says that I have unresolved daddy issues.’

  Becky rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t we all?’

  Rawdon dipped his head in acknowledgement of this universal truth. ‘My therapist also says that I’m an unapologetic narcissist and that I shouldn’t always talk about myself, especially when I’m on a date with a beautiful woman.’ And then in case Becky hadn’t got the hint, Rawdon’s knee nudged against hers.

  Becky moved her leg away. These rich boys spent their whole lives having whatever they wanted handed to them on a plate. If Rawdon Crawley put in some time and effort, then he might appreciate his prize a little more than Jos Sedley had done. ‘If your idea of a date is a McDonalds in a retail park, then talking about yo
urself is the very least of your problems.’ She gave Thisbe a shove so he’d get to his feet and she could slide out from the table. ‘Come on, Crawleys, time to go. Who needs wees?’

  Chapter 14

  Christmas at Queen’s Crawley was not like any Christmas Becky had known before. It didn’t involve one or both of her parents passing out drunk, for example, or Jemima Pinkerton wandering the streets of Southbourne in her nightie trying to find the Angel Gabriel.

  Still, Becky wasn’t too fond of being woken up at the ungodly hour of five thirty in the morning, when it was still pitch black outside, by Artemis and Thisbe jumping on her bed and screaming that Father Christmas had left them stockings.

  The stockings were from Rosa. They couldn’t have been from anyone else because they contained wooden toys made by amputee orphans in some godforsaken Third World country and organic, Fair Trade trail mix.

  Becky shoved the iPad at them, Frozen already cued up and ready to go, then put the pillow over her head and managed another couple of hours of sleep.

  At a more reasonable hour, she brought all five children, washed and dressed and vibrating with anticipation, downstairs to a proper breakfast. Sir Pitt had ordered one of his prize sows to be slaughtered, so there was bacon, eggs laid by the vicious chickens that ruled the kitchen garden with beaks of iron, and fresh bread.

  Even better, Bute and Martha were intent on going to church, mainly so they could sit in the family pew with martyred but lofty expressions. Once they’d left to walk to church through the estate, as no Crawley had done for at least two generations, everyone else became quite giddy with relief.

  After a long, leisurely breakfast, and the first bottles of champagne had been opened, there were presents for everyone, even Becky. Rosa had bought her a lump of rose quartz suspended on a silver chain, and Jane had stayed up half the night to knit Becky her very own moulting red corsage.

  She hadn’t been left off Sir Pitt’s list either. He cornered her in the scullery before lunch. In honour of the most sacred of all days, the heating was cranked up full blast and Sir Pitt was swanning around in silk pyjamas and an ornate dressing gown, like some posh, English version of Hugh Hefner.

  ‘Little Becky,’ he crooned, closing the door softly behind him. ‘Have you been naughty or nice?’

  ‘Depends who’s asking,’ Becky said with a resigned note. Sir Pitt came up behind her so he could ghost hot breath over her neck and rest one of his hands on her waist, high up enough that the tips of his fingers grazed the underside of her breast. She let him have that much, because it was Christmas, then wriggled away from him. ‘No need to ask you whether you’ve been naughty or nice. You’re always a very naughty, naughty man.’

  He chuckled appreciatively. ‘I have a very special present for you, but you have to turn around.’

  Becky treated the scullery window to an exasperated grimace then turned round. ‘I can’t see any present,’ she said, because Sir Pitt was empty handed.

  ‘It’s in my pocket. No, I’m not going to tell you which one. You’ll have to have a feel for yourself.’ He smiled wolfishly then raised his hands above his head. ‘I’m entirely at your mercy.’

  If the only present he was hiding turned out to be his ageing cock, then Becky was going to give it such a squeeze that he’d be bent double for the rest of the day. But after gifting him a few fleeting gropes as she investigated his dressing-gown pocket, she found something in the pocket of his pyjama bottoms that was also hard to the touch.

  ‘A family heirloom,’ he explained as Becky held up an art-deco-style diamond brooch, by which he meant that it had belonged to his first wife’s great-grandmother.

  Becky didn’t know that but she did know that Sir Pitt was a cheap bastard, so she bit down on the brooch to test if the gold was real, then scraped the big central diamond against the scullery window where it left a pleasing scratch. She’d have to have it valued properly but it seemed that it was legit, so she gave him another grope and swirled her tongue lasciviously around the brooch.

  Sir Pitt’s eyes darkened and he tried to put her hand back on his crotch. ‘Be kind to Little Pitt, Becky. He’s got all sorts of treats planned for you.’

  This was starting to become a problem and one that Becky really didn’t want to deal with. It was a very delicate game that she was playing. One little hand job could upset the balance but maybe another gentle tug would keep him happy for a couple of hours.

  ‘Becky! Those brussels sprouts aren’t going to top and tail themselves! Oh, Sir Pitt, whatever are you doing in the scullery in your fancy dressing gown?’ Mrs Tinker asked, bursting into the small room and rescuing Becky in her hour of need.

  ‘It’s not a dressing gown, it’s a smoking jacket,’ Sir Pitt said sulkily and Becky, with a sigh of relief, vowed to avoid him for the rest of the day.

  Mostly she helped Mrs Tinker in the kitchen while happily bitching about Bute and Martha, but she was expected to join the Crawleys for Christmas Dinner. It was served at five, by which time the whole Crawley clan was past pissed and heading for hammered. Even Jane was squiffy on the Baileys; only Bute, Martha and Becky abstained. Technically, Becky was working and not so technically, she was the child of two alcoholics and had so many balls in play that if she were to lose control of her mental faculties, then the whole lot could come crashing to the ground.

  After dinner, the children, fractious from too much sugar and being awake since five thirty, were sent to bed. Becky gathered them up, hissed at them to sing a couple of verses of ‘Silent Night’ in French, then took them upstairs, little Artemis slung over her shoulder like a sack of spuds. Rosa dabbed a tear from her eye, Jane sighed and looked at Pitt Junior hopefully, and even Martha Crawley looked a little less boot-faced. It was as if Becky were a modern-day Maria Von Trapp, but beautiful, and without the least inclination to take holy orders or ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’ with the head of the family.

  When Becky came back downstairs after a protracted bedtime during which she had threatened to tie Thisbe (always Thisbe) to his bed, it was to find that the Crawleys had now relocated to what the family called The Den.

  It wasn’t particularly den-like, more a dark and gloomy cave. The walls were hung with heavy brocade paper and paintings, not by Old Masters, but by well-regarded pupils of Old Masters. The room was furnished with threadbare Aubusson carpets and uncomfortable chairs and sofas upholstered in the slipperiest fabric known to man. The one TV set in Queen’s Crawley was kept here in a cabinet, which Sir Pitt was unlocking with some ceremony and unsteady fingers, because he’d been drinking all day.

  ‘What time does your programme start, Mattie?’ he bellowed, his face red from all the alcohol and his exertions with a lock and key.

  Dame Matilda was uncomfortably perched on the slipperiest sofa, Briggs on one side, Rawdon on the other. All three of them had their feet planted firmly on the floor to stop themselves sliding off. Maybe that was why the old lady had such a peevish expression. She waved the hand that wasn’t clutching a large gin and tonic dismissively, ‘Let’s not, Pitt. Nobody needs to see me making a fool of myself in period costume.’

  Pitt grunted in triumph as he managed to wrench open the cabinet doors. ‘Well, you force us to watch it every other year, so why should today be any different? Anyway, my house, my rules!’

  Matilda and Briggs exchanged their seventeenth eye roll of the day as the television came to life and the familiar theme tune rang out. Becky had never seen Lyndon Place before, but it seemed fairly accurate from her experience of the strange hinterland between below stairs and above stairs. She was currently perched uncomfortably on an old footstool, out of range of the cosy, roaring fire and on the fringes. Among them but not of them. If it wasn’t for the way that Rawdon would occasionally glance her way, his gaze as smouldering as the logs in the grate, then Becky might just as well be invisible.

  She pointedly looked away from Rawdon with a tiny, disapproving shake of her head; she’d pointedly avoided him a
ll day and if she wasn’t mistaken, his interest was piqued. She turned her attention back to the television. There was a complicated storyline about the Earl’s hunting boots, which had gone missing, the chinless suitors of the daughters of the house all looked the same, and just as Becky was thinking that she might slip below stairs for more gossiping with Mrs Tinker, events took a dramatic turn.

  On screen the family gathered for a grand festive dinner. The table was dressed with spotless white linen, sparkling glassware and much gilt-bedazzled china, very different from the yellowed tablecloths and napkins, cloudy glasses and mismatched crockery for the Crawleys’ Christmas meal.

  Still, in art as well as in life, there were different factions within the family, all with their own agenda, and ruling over all of them, an iron fist in black-lace evening mittens, was the Dowager Countess. It was quite obvious that Dame Matilda had been typecast because there was absolutely no difference between her on-screen and off-screen personas. She gave the Earl’s second eldest and most whiny daughter a quite spectacular dressing down, which echoed the quite spectacular dressing down she’d given Rosa earlier when she’d asked not to be seated so close to the pigs in blankets.

  The Dowager Countess banged her ornate cane on the floor as Dame Matilda muttered something to Briggs, who shook his head and could be heard to murmur, ‘I know. Unbelievable.’

  Then the cane fell to the ground with a clatter as the Dowager Countess gripped her chest, slumped to one side and began to projectile-vomit blood all over the snowy-white tablecloth.

  And that was the end of her.

  Back in the den at Queen’s Crawley, there was a moment of shocked silence.

  ‘Well, I said to the director, “Nigel, dear,” I said, “please let me die with dignity.” But no,’ Matilda sniffed. ‘Now, shall we turn over to the BBC? Have we missed the Strictly Christmas special?’

  But Sir Pitt was determined to have his pound of flesh. ‘Poor Mattie,’ he proclaimed with such a lack of sincerity that it was hard to believe that he’d ever won an Oscar. ‘From Lady Macbeth to that. Quite the letdown.’