The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp

by Sarra Manning

  ‘Normally I wouldn’t condone this kind of treatment, but I’m sure Dame Crawley will feel much better once she’s out and about and able to take her 3 p.m. glass of champagne,’ her oncologist said drily to the two other specialists, who both agreed with him.

  Maybe once Matilda Crawley had processed the news, felt a softening in her temperamental heart and returned one of Rawdon’s calls, then she would begin to rally. But before that could happen, Martha Crawley arrived in Primrose Hill with two suitcases and a pugnacious, determined look on her pinched face, which brooked no denial.

  When Briggs tried to bodily prevent her from gaining access to his mistress’s suite, Martha swept him out of the way as if he was a mere slip of a thing and not a portly fifty-something.

  ‘Not now, Briggs,’ she snapped. ‘I’m here on a mission of mercy.’

  Then Martha flung open Mattie’s bedroom door and though her cardiac consultant had sworn there was nothing wrong with her heart, Dame Matilda very nearly did have a cardiac incident at the sight of her sister-in-law standing there.

  ‘I’m not to be disturbed,’ she said querulously but Martha was already stalking towards her, her body quivering in anticipation, from her clod-hopping size-eight feet, to her huge buttress-like bosom, to the tip of her pointy nose. And in her hand, she clutched the fateful, spiteful letter from Barbara Pinkerton.

  ‘Oh, dear Mattie!’ she cried. ‘I come to you in your hour of need. I can’t even imagine how you must feel at Rawdon’s betrayal after everything that you’ve done for him. And as for that Becky Sharp! Well, no one can blame you for being taken in by that … I hate to be uncharitable, you know me, I don’t have a bad bone in my body, but I’m amazed that she’s married to Rawdon rather than serving time in Holloway. After all, her father was a hardened criminal. Look!’

  She thrust the letter at the dame, who’d insisted on having the curtains drawn (‘The light hurts my poor eyes’) to shut out the brilliant July sunshine trying to stream in through the windows. But now she clicked her fingers at Martha.

  ‘Can’t see a bloody thing. Open the drapes and fetch me my reading glasses.’

  Then she pored over the letter while Martha stood over her, hands clasped in glee, as the dame read out choice snippets.

  ‘She preyed on a weak, elderly lady! … Several items of jewellery, including my late mother’s wedding ring, which went missing … I urge you to pluck out this thorn as soon as you are able, or you may live to regret it.’

  When she was done, Dame Matilda collapsed back on her Pratesi pillows, the letter fluttering to the ground as she clasped a hand to her heart, which was beating out quite a steady rhythm, all things considered.

  ‘Oh my,’ the much-celebrated actress whimpered. ‘It’s a wonder Becky Sharp didn’t murder us all in our beds.’ She tried to lift herself up then fell back with a weak cry. ‘I’m sure I can’t have a single piece of jewellery left. That creature will have stolen it all and hocked it to one of her lowlife associates. Oh, Rawdon! My boy! My foolish boy! What have you done?’

  Then she fell to one side as Martha gasped in genuine alarm. It was a bravura performance, especially as later on Briggs couldn’t find a single valuable missing, despite checking three times over. (Fortunately for Becky, Matilda had completely forgotten about the gold set of hip flask, cigarette lighter and compact, which, to her credit, Becky hadn’t hocked to one of her lowlife associates but had hidden in a compartment of one of the Louis Vuitton suitcases, which Matilda had also forgotten about.)

  Still, there wasn’t much time for Matilda to dwell on such matters. Instead of railing against Becky (though she could hardly bring herself to utter that creature’s name), she now had a more immediate figure to despise: Martha Crawley.

  The woman had taken advantage of Matilda’s frailty and Briggs’s ineffectualness to move herself into the guest suite (recently vacated by Becky) but spent most of her time installed in the dame’s bedroom.

  Matilda didn’t have a moment’s peace. Considering her precarious state of health (how she regretted complaining about her ailments; now she wished that she’d been a silent martyr), it seemed as if her sister-in-law was determined to cosset her into an early grave.

  Despite the heat of the London summer, the curtains and windows were firmly closed and Martha would have no truck with turning on the air conditioning. ‘Full of toxins,’ she insisted on the one occasion when Matilda was able to get out of bed undetected and turn it on herself.

  She couldn’t read or watch television or even sleep because Martha was a constant presence at her bedside, trying to stuff foul-tasting juices and mysterious pills down her gullet. Not that her doctors were allowed admittance either. ‘The only reason they want to see you is so they can take your temperature and charge you a small fortune for the privilege. No, Mattie dear, what you need is tender loving care from your own flesh and blood. Well, flesh and blood by marriage, but you know what I mean.’

  Normally Matilda loved someone who’d indulge her forays into ill health (Briggs was particularly obliging and always happy to work The Netflix Thing so Matilda could watch the show with the drag queens, or pop to the patisserie on Regents Park Road to buy a box of cakes to tempt her appetite) but Martha treated her like such an infirm invalid that Matilda feared that her limbs would actually start atrophying.

  ‘No, Mattie dear, you’re not to get out of bed. I’ll get the bedpan I ordered from Amazon Prime and then I’ll give you a blanket bath,’ she’d insist with a determined look on her face. ‘And I’ll just take your phone away because we don’t want you being bothered about anything except getting better. If there’s someone that you need to talk to, you can tell me and I’ll decide if they’re likely to upset you.’

  Then there was the talking. The woman did – not – stop – talking. If she wasn’t trying to convince Matilda that Mr Death was all but hammering at the door, she was constantly carping on about Becky Sharp and how Rawdon had never had a lick of common sense anyway. That’s when she wasn’t promoting wretched Bute (who was currently as happy as a pig in muck that his domineering domina was staying indefinitely with his sister) and her own agenda.

  ‘You know me, Mattie dear, I’m not one to cast aspersions, but Bute and I have enjoyed a very different standard of living to you and Sir Pitt. I say enjoyed, but what I really mean is endured. Bute has just as much acting talent as the rest of the family, though he’s been cruelly overlooked by the industry, not that I begrudge you your success and what with Sir Pitt being the eldest, of course he was going to inherit Queen’s Crawley, but you have to admit that Bute has rather drawn the short straw. It would be very easy for him to become bitter, but he’s not like that, Mattie dear, as you know. He’s always been your biggest fan, your greatest champion …’

  If Matilda had been willing, or subsequently allowed, to leave her bed to have an MRI scan, it would have been discovered that she had developed a slight heart murmur, and that her weakened state after Rawdon’s sudden marriage wasn’t just a case of theatrics. But there was nothing like a heady dose of hatred to strengthen both resolve and a dodgy ticker, and the longer Martha stayed, the more Matilda hated her and the more she rallied. Compared to Martha Crawley, Becky Sharp was practically Mother Teresa …

  *

  Martha Crawley’s hostile takeover lasted nearly a month, but even Martha had to nap occasionally. And so came that fateful afternoon in early August when the interfering busybody woke to find that her place in Matilda’s bedroom had been usurped.

  As Martha ambled down the corridor to dear aunt Mattie’s room, her thoughts resting happily on the tea and cake that she’d order Firkin to bring up, she heard a bright, perky voice say, ‘Oh my goodness, you need some fresh air in here!’

  A hand to her heart, Martha rushed down the hall to find a cuckoo in her nest! Or rather young Pitt’s dreary girlfriend, Jane, flinging open curtains and windows. ‘I got you some of those yogurts from M&S that you like, Mattie, and a thriller that
all of my book group loved.’

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ Martha demanded from the doorway, her body shaking with fury.

  ‘Hello, Martha,’ Jane said with some surprise. ‘Are you joining Mattie and I?’

  ‘Joining you?’ Martha echoed, looking around the room for her patient but Dame Matilda was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘For our girly date,’ Jane explained with a kind smile that Martha wanted to rip off her face. ‘Once a month we meet up for high tea, though it usually ends up involving champagne rather than a pot of Lapsang Souchong.’ She giggled, guiltily.

  ‘But Dame Matilda isn’t well enough to go anywhere, let alone drink champagne,’ Martha declared, looking about the room in case Dame Matilda was hiding under her dressing table. ‘You’re not welcome here, Jane. Dame Matilda needs me—’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said a cutting voice from the doorway. Dame Crawley was standing upright, fully dressed, with a sweating Briggs cringing behind her. ‘And if you’re not gone in ten minutes then I’m calling the police and having you arrested for a false imprisonment.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Jane murmured with an anxious glance at the tableau before her. ‘I think I’ll just pop downstairs and put the yogurts in the fridge.’

  She darted out of the room, and Martha clasped a hand to her quivering bosoms.

  ‘Mattie dear, what are you saying? You’re not well, my love. Why are you up? Why are you wearing clothes? Should we get you assessed for Alzheimer’s, because … OH!’ Martha ended on an alarmed squeak as Firkin had appeared in that silent way of hers and suddenly had Martha’s wrist in an uncompromising grip.

  ‘Time for you to leave,’ she hissed, applying pressure to Martha’s arm.

  ‘Don’t you “Mattie dear” me any more! There’s nothing wrong with my mind and I’m wearing clothes because I’m going out with darling Jane. A little afternoon tea, though actually I could murder a glass of champagne,’ Matilda said, as if a little afternoon tea was no big deal after being bedridden for weeks.

  ‘A glass of champagne will do you the world of good,’ Briggs ventured, still sweating like a furnace stoker in a heatwave. He hated confrontations.

  ‘Yes, I think so too,’ Matilda agreed crisply. ‘Some fresh air, convivial company, a little Louis Roederor and then once we’ve said goodbye to darling Jane, Briggs and I are off to a screening at BAFTA.’

  ‘But Mattie dear, this woman is manhandling me!’ Martha tried to shake Firkin off, but the diminutive yet deceptively strong housekeeper refused to relinquish her grip.

  Dame Crawley and Briggs exchanged a surprised look. ‘Do you see anyone being manhandled, Briggs?’

  Briggs licked his top lip nervously. ‘I d-d-don’t.’

  ‘Neither do I.’ Matilda turned away from the scene of the alleged crime. ‘Now, do come on, Briggs, dear, the car is waiting and Firkin, do make sure that our uninvited guest leaves with all her belongings.’ Then the dame swept away, only to reappear a second later. ‘And none of my belongings, because I’m still convinced Becky Sharp didn’t leave empty-handed.’

  *

  Dame Matilda clung on to Briggs as she climbed out of the car at the foot of the red carpet. Her legs were a little wobbly – no wonder, when she’d been forcibly detained in her own bed for so long. But the show must go on and her mind was once again on Becky Sharp, though she swore that she’d never say that name out loud again.

  Whatever her faults or her intentions, that girl had nursed her through a nasty chest infection and even when Matilda had been feeling rotten, Becky had always been able to make her smile by impersonating Briggs at his shrillest or providing a very bitchy and entertaining commentary about what people were wearing in the Heat magazine.

  Then as Dame Matilda and Briggs turned a corner so they were within sight of the entrance, there she was.

  Becky Sharp.

  That girl and Rawdon were facing a big bank of photographers and while Rawdon stood there with his trademark scowl and slouch, she was posing like a pro. Shifting her position slightly every few seconds, tilting her head first this way, then that, but always, always leaning into Rawdon, so he was eclipsed by his wife who was dressed all in white again and positively oozing that indefinable something that people called star quality.

  ‘Well, the nerve of her!’ Briggs breathed. ‘That is some grade-A limelight-hogging.’

  ‘The very nerve,’ Matilda echoed and her murmuring heart hardened. In a moment of weakness, she might have missed the girl, but Rebecca Sharp (she would never be a Crawley) cared only for herself and Mattie would never forgive herself for being taken in by the little baggage. Never forgive Rawdon, either, for thinking with his privates rather than his head. For being just like his father.

  ‘Dame Matilda! Over here!’

  ‘You feeling better, Dame Crawley?’

  The photographers had, finally, noticed Dame Matilda Crawley because so-called star quality was no match for a career that had spanned over fifty years, thank you very much.

  A couple of black-clad wranglers began to usher Dame Matilda forward so she could take her turn on the red carpet, and Becky was still smiling that simpering smile and Rawdon had turned to see his aunt approaching.

  He took off his shades and smiled, oh, that heartbreaking, crooked smile of his, but then he and that girl were already being led away.

  Matilda liked to think that she was graceful and yet stately, as befitted the greatest actress of her generation, as she posed for the cameras.

  ‘Dame Matilda, can we get a group shot with Rawdon and Becky?’ called out one of the photographers and the others took up the cry so that Becky and Rawdon, who were waiting at the entrance, were called back by one of the wranglers.

  ‘Mattie,’ she saw Rawdon shape the word, because she couldn’t hear him over the roar of the crowd. Then that creature came trailing after him with a hopeful smile on her face, which Matilda wasn’t buying.

  ‘Lovely jubbly, let’s have one all together for the family album,’ shouted out the nice photographer from the Daily Mirror, who Matilda used to have a lot of time for as she’d known him since he was a bumbling seventeen-year-old assistant. Now, she could quite happily have killed him.

  ‘Mattie,’ Rawdon said again as he reached her side and then that girl was there, in front of her.

  ‘It’s so lovely to see you, Matilda,’ she breathed. ‘I’ve missed you and I feel wretched about the argument we had. This unpleasantness, it’s so silly. Can’t we be friends again?’

  ‘Come on. All together!’

  ‘Can you give the dame a kiss? One on each cheek.’

  ‘Come on, Rawdy, it would be wonderful to have a picture of the three of us together again.’ Becky moved to stand on the other side of the dame, and as she passed in front of her, she gave Mattie just a hint of a twinkle, a look that said, ‘What larks!’

  ‘Well, Rebecca, it isn’t at all lovely to see you. In fact, it’s quite a nasty shock,’ Matilda said coldly, even inch the grande dame, though that twinkle gave her such a pang of loss over the fun they’d once shared. But had it really been fun or had it actually been a girl on the make, humouring a silly old woman? Besides, it had never really been the three of them; it had been Rebecca reeling Rawdon in, and Matilda had just been the means to that end. What a fool she’d been!

  The dame took a step back from the pair of them. Oh, she couldn’t even bear to look at Rawdon, so crushing was her disappointment, her worry, at his choice of a first wife. Becky Sharp was far too clever for her own good and far, far too clever for poor Rawdon. Matilda took another step. Then another.

  Despite her wobbly legs and aching back, with head held high, she cut them dead on the red carpet in front of the entire press corps.

  ‘I think she just broke my heart,’ Rawdon muttered, his shoulders slumping. ‘She’s never going to come round, is she?’

  ‘She will. It’s only been a few weeks. For God’s sake, smile,’ Becky hissed, because that woman might just
have humiliated them in front of photographers from every major British news outlet, but Becky was damned if they were going to catch her looking sad about it. ‘Even I know that you should show a united front in public, and I was raised by wolves.’

  But as she and Rawdon slowly sauntered back up the red carpet towards the entrance of the restaurant where the reception was taking place, Becky felt as if her heart was breaking too.

  When she was on top form, even with a chest infection, Mattie had been wicked fun. It was so rare for Becky to ever find someone she could be wicked with and she … well, it was possible that she missed the demanding old witch. But that wasn’t the only reason why Becky’s heart was in a sorry state. If Matilda was going to cut Rawdon off from all her millions, then Becky was going to have to rely solely on Rawdon’s acting ability to keep her in a style that she could only dream of.

  And based on tonight’s performance, his acting abilities needed a huge amount of work.

  Chapter 21

  It seemed to Amelia that it took no time at all her for entire life to be dismantled.

  All their property was sold, for a lot less than market value, according to Mummy, with the house in Kensington the last asset to go. Two quite terrifying men from the Official Receiver’s office, not much older than Amelia, had supervised as the Sedleys had chosen what they wanted to keep from a meagre selection of their former possessions before everything else was sold at auction. The paintings, the jewellery, the beautiful hand-painted bedroom set Amelia had been given for her fifteenth birthday, which had always made her feel like a princess. Even Pianoforte had been put up for sale.

  It was ghastly.

  The papers had gleefully picked over all their things and though Amelia had kept away from the auction – everyone from the lawyers to dear old Dobbin had said that it was pointless to put herself through such a horrid ordeal – Mrs Blenkinsop had gone and had come back practically bursting with news and a face full of smiles. Which was odd because Mrs Blenkinsop had been quite bitter ever since Daddy had had to let her go. She’d also been furious when the forensic accountants had queried why a monthly Ocado delivery was being made to an address in Leytonstone where Mrs Blenkinsop’s sister lived.