The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp

by Sarra Manning

  ‘Anyway, George, I wanted to pick your brains about government policy and my homeless teenagers,’ Becky said and she patted the over-stuffed chair next to her so George would sit down. Three became two, and one was the loneliest number.

  Amelia had no choice but to stumble away, retracing her steps back to where Dobbin was now having a very boring talk about military-issue helicopters with the gnomic director. He smiled distractedly at her as she sat down next to him so she could have a ringside view of Becky and George, her George, heads together as they talked and laughed and kept touching each other. His hand on her thigh, her hand coming to rest on his – God, they didn’t even have the decency to sneak back into the shadows.

  ‘Emmy, you don’t look very happy.’

  ‘That’s because I’m not happy,’ she said, turning to Dobbin who was now able to give Amelia his full attention, the decrepit director retiring for the night. ‘George has forgotten that I even exist.’

  Dobbin followed her gaze back to where Becky and George were doing a very good impersonation of two people who only had eyes for each other. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘Your friend, Rebecca …’

  ‘It turns out that she absolutely isn’t a friend of mine,’ Amelia said.

  ‘Well, you’re much better off without her,’ Dobbin insisted because he had a lot of experience of dealing with insurgents, enemy agents and snipers, and as far as he was concerned, Becky Sharp was a dangerous mixture of all three. ‘George won’t be the first man or the last to be taken in by her, but you know it’s you he loves.’

  He actually crossed his fingers behind his back as Amelia sighed. ‘Will you take me back to the hotel, please?’

  ‘Far better to sit here and pretend that you’re having a wonderful time without him.’ Dobbin dared to touch Amelia’s bare arm with his clumsy fingers. ‘If it would help, I could tell you a joke. Though it might not necessarily be a funny joke.’

  Amelia’s smile was completely genuine even if it did sag at the corners. ‘Dear Dobbin, if only more men were like you. But I really don’t want to stay here a second longer … Oh! He’s coming back …’

  George was striding towards them and Amelia lifted her head, her foolish heart lifting in unison, but he wasn’t stopping. ‘Becky’s cold. Said I’d get her wrap,’ he explained as he passed them by, walking over to the table where Rawdon Crawley had removed his shades and was trying to rustle up a posse to decamp to the Casino Barriere.

  Amelia watched as George said something to him and Rawdon shrugged, looked around helplessly, even patting his pockets. Finally he had a lightbulb moment and from the back of his chair produced a filmy piece of fabric that wouldn’t have kept anything warm. Not that it was cold in the ballroom – on the contrary, it was steaming hot, especially on the upper levels, even with all the doors thrown open.

  Again, George spoke to Rawdon and again there was the same exaggerated pantomime from the actor that the New York Times had described as ‘one of the most gifted and subtle proponents of his craft’, until Rawdon produced a pen. Amelia watched as George walked away, this time to an empty table where he picked up a canapé menu and began to write on the back of it. It took him a good five minutes to compose his thoughts and the note. Amelia’s silly heart lifted again. It was an apology, of course. A little love letter asking for her forgiveness.

  But it was nothing of the sort. George was on the move, walking past Amelia with a vague, polite smile as if they were distant acquaintances and he wasn’t the man who’d bent her over her bathroom sink not two hours before.

  She could hardly bear to watch him hand Becky her wrap, the note concealed in its folds. George probably thought he was being stealthy, not realising that wherever he was in a room, Amelia would always stare longingly at him. Or maybe he did realise but he just didn’t care and her heart, which had had quite the workout this evening, sank and broke all over again.

  ‘I really do want to go back to the hotel, Dobbin,’ she said in such a fractured, frigid voice that Dobbin didn’t try to persuade her to stay and style it out.

  *

  It took ages to get rid of George Wylie, like a particularly stubborn case of nits. Even after Becky kept her hands to herself and dimmed her smile by several megawatts, George persisted in outstaying his welcome.

  ‘Not now, Dobs,’ he said when his huge-footed, jug-eared friend came over and pointedly told him that Amelia was leaving because she had a headache. ‘Probably drank too much champagne. She just needs to take a couple of aspirin and sleep it off.’

  ‘George!’ Dobbin said sharply. ‘You mustn’t monopolise Mrs Crawley.’

  Becky laughed at that; Dobbin was about as subtle as one of the tanks he commanded when he was blowing up the innocent inhabitants of some poor village that were standing between him and the Taliban.

  Dobbin had shot Becky a look of pure dislike, which had made her laugh again. The captain was of absolutely no use to her so who cared what he thought? And though she was desperate for George to leave, she turned to him and moistened her lips with a slow sweep of her tongue. ‘Now, where were we?’

  Dobbin flounced off, in his fury almost colliding with a waiter and his tray of lobster rolls, and Becky had to suffer George banging on about his wonderful career and how people had compared his maiden speech in the House to Winston Churchill’s.

  Finally, Rawdon realised that his wife had been missing for a good hour and came over to claim his bride.

  Behind his shades, his eyes flashed furiously at the sight of their bodies perched so comfortably close together.

  ‘You touch Becky one more time on the leg and I’ll break every finger on that hand,’ he said menacingly and in a very un-Rawdy-like voice. It was just as well that he was fresh from rehearsals for his role as a drug-running gangster in the Parisian slums.

  ‘Now, now, Crawley, Becky and I were just catching up,’ George blustered, shrinking back slightly as he remembered the time at Eton when Rawdon had beaten the living daylights out of a much older boy when he found out that he’d tried to bugger one of the new intake of F-blockers. ‘You’re hardly newlyweds any more. You’ll have to learn to share the most beautiful woman in the room.’

  Becky simpered at George’s gallantry and Rawdon scowled then growled, actually growled, ‘She’s mine and I don’t fucking share.’

  George scuttled off pretty sharpish after that, looking over his shoulder at Becky and mouthing, ‘Read the note.’

  Becky sank back in her chair. ‘Jesus Christ, I thought he’d never go.’

  Rawdon held out his hand to haul her up. ‘You did want him to go, didn’t you?’ he checked, doubt creeping into his voice because he and Becky had had a bitter row just before they’d left the yacht when she’d discovered him hoovering up a couple of lines on her Chanel mirrored box clutch. Though Rawdon still wasn’t sure if she was angry about the coke when he’d promised to stay clean tonight, or if she was angry because he’d done it on her Chanel bag.

  And though Becky was still angry with Rawdon, both for doing coke and doing it on the mirrored box clutch that she’d been waitlisted for, she hadn’t been even the slightest bit tempted to linger in the arms of George Wylie. As it was, she’d had to suffer a couple of his very amateurish attempts to kiss her. ‘I was desperate for him to leave,’ she said, letting Rawdon pull her up and fit her against his body. He’d been working with a trainer because the Parisian gangster he was going to play spent most of the film in a tight, white wife-beater and Becky could feel all the newly defined musculature hard against her.

  ‘He had his hands all over me,’ she said in a shocked whisper. ‘Not the way you expect a Member of Parliament to behave.’

  Rawdon, bless him, was so predictable. His eyes and his voice darkened and his abdominal muscles weren’t the only hard thing digging into Becky. ‘Where did he touch you?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ she promised. ‘When we’re on the plane. How long do you think it will take to fly
to Paris?’

  They both shuddered in anticipation. Rawdon, at the thought of taking his wife in mid-air after she’d shown him the places on her delectably naked body that George Wylie had dared to touch. Becky was giddy simply at the thought of flying on a private jet.

  There had been a time when she couldn’t even imagine that she might one day travel on one of the planes she saw leaving vapour trails across the London skyline. Then, once she’d been on enough planes to resent the fact that the sybaritic luxury of first class was denied to her, she’d dreamed of turning left, not right.

  And now, private jet pissed on first class’s chips every time.

  ‘About an hour,’ Rawdon answered.

  ‘That’s long enough for you to do all sorts of depraved things to my poor, innocent body,’ Becky decided and the furious rows were all forgotten as Rawdon stared down at the perfect beauty of his wife’s face and how it was improved by her filthy smile, the arch of her eyebrow. ‘If you can still get it up after all that coke.’

  ‘Don’t Becky,’ Rawdon murmured. ‘Don’t ruin it.’

  ‘I won’t, I’m sorry,’ Becky said meekly and she tucked her hand in his. ‘Come on, take me away from all this. Take me to Paris.’

  They were halfway down the sweeping staircase, heads turning to watch them depart because they really were the most striking pair, when Becky remembered that she was still holding George’s note.

  All the better to tap Rawdon on the hand with it. ‘I told you that gullible fool would put it in writing,’ she said triumphantly. ‘You owe me a thousand quid.’

  CRAWLEY CRASHES AND BURNS

  Though it premiered in Cannes amid great fanfare, The Girl I Left Behind had the lowest opening box-office weekend of any film released so far this year.

  The London-set, World War Two spy drama, considered to be a breakout vehicle for Rawdon Crawley, son of Sir Pitt Crawley, was widely panned by critics for its ‘lumpen script, heavy-handed direction and soulless performance from the hotly tipped Crawley,’ as Thomas Coffin wrote in a particularly savage one-star review in the Guardian.

  The bad news doesn’t end there for Rawdon Crawley. Filming on his latest project, How to Live Well on Nothing a Year, was temporarily suspended due to a dispute between director, Archie Auteur, and production company, Chopper Films, over costs spiralling out of control.

  No sooner had filming resumed when it stopped again after Crawley sustained lacerations to his face and a broken nose in what his publicist described as ‘a bad case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ However, on-set gossip is that Crawley, living up to his hell-raiser reputation, was involved in a bar fight.

  Happily for the troubled production, Auteur felt that the actor’s facial injuries added piquancy to his role as a gangster involved in a turf war between rival Parisian gangs, and filming resumed.

  Is How to Live Well on Nothing a Year doomed before it’s even wrapped? Watch this space!

  Chapter 26

  When Rawdon called and begged for her help, Becky was determined to let him stew in his own drug-addled juices. He’d promised not to gamble. He’d promised to keep his nose clean, literally, after the incident a few weeks ago when he’d had said nose broken after losing a fortune in a poker game and not having the funds to pay what he owed because he’d spent all his money on coke.

  But he’d been lying. Again. Instead, he’d carried on doing just what he damn well pleased: cocaine and playing poker very badly, and now he owed even more money and was being held captive until he honoured his debts. Or rather, until Becky bailed him out.

  ‘They’re not messing around, Becks,’ he whispered. ‘They say they’re going to start with my fingers. I need my fingers.’

  ‘You can manage perfectly well without a couple of fingers. Might shock some sense into your thick, fucking head.’

  She put the phone down on Rawdon’s inarticulate pleas. She wasn’t going to spend a second worrying about him. He was big enough and ugly enough to take care of himself.

  But as she sat there, biting her nails and contemplating whether to have a hopefully relaxing bath in the huge claw-foot tub or not, she began to feel uneasy. Rawdon wasn’t ugly. He was pretty. Those soulful eyes, framed with dark, sooty lashes that Becky couldn’t hope to replicate, not even with the most expensive lash extensions. Perfect, pouty lips that had launched a thousand teen-girl crushes, cheekbones that could have been carved by Michelangelo himself and photographed so well. As did every other inch of Rawdon Crawley, which was why his face was his fortune. It was Becky’s fortune too and God knows what would become of her if the thugs that Rawdon had got involved with did irreparable damage to her meal ticket.

  But really, this wasn’t her problem. This was Rawdon’s agent, Mike’s problem. After all, he took 15 per cent of everything Rawdon earned so he could damn well sort this out.

  Mike begged to differ when Becky phoned him. Said it was Rawdon’s publicist, Knuckle’s problem. But when Becky finally managed to get in touch with Knuckles, he said that Rawdon hadn’t paid him in months but she could try the unit publicist for the film Rawdon was meant to be shooting when he wasn’t getting himself into all sorts of trouble.

  Becky didn’t appreciate being given the runaround like she was some annoying problem that wouldn’t go away. It reminded her of the bad old days when she was passed around like an unwanted parcel between different case workers. By the time she’d been given the brush-off by the unit publicist, the producer and finally the producer’s second assistant, Spooney, she’d completely ruined her expensive manicure by chewing her nails down to the quick.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t care, Becky, my angel,’ Spooney shouted down the phone, while in the background it sounded like he was at a raucous party. ‘It’s just at this point, it would be cheaper to fire Rawdon and reshoot the movie with an actor who actually shows up on set each day at his allotted call time without any facial injuries.’

  ‘Spooney,’ Becky cooed, though her seductive tone of voice was wasted because Spooney shouted at her to speak up. ‘Come on, $50,000 is loose change. You could just write it off as expenses. I’d be ever so grateful.’

  ‘No can do. You and Rawdon have already blown through half our budget with your demands. And our liability insurance has already gone through the roof,’ Spooney bellowed cheerfully. ‘Afraid you’re on your own. Though if you need some ready cash, then I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy. I’ll get someone to give you a call.’

  It wasn’t at all what Becky wanted to hear but she had to pretend that she was grateful, though Spooney cut her gratitude off after five seconds.

  ‘Laters! And Rawdon better be on set at 7 a.m. or he’ll wish his new friends had killed him.’

  Becky paced the floors of the €10,000-a-week apartment in the third arrondissement, waiting for the phone call. They owed €40,000 back rent because the production company had slashed costs. Said that they could stay in a crummy hotel out in Beaugrenelle like the rest of the cast and crew. Rawdon would have agreed to that but Becky had insisted that no one would treat him like a star if he didn’t act like a star, so they’d stayed put. They’d probably have to do a runner as soon as filming finished.

  Then her phone rang. It was someone who spoke French with a guttural foreign accent and didn’t bother with any social niceties. Just issued a series of instructions and gave Becky an address. A part of her, quite a large part, was tempted to call it quits and leave Rawdon to his own grisly fate but the smaller, somewhat kinder, part of her won out. She packed a bag and ran down to the street to find a cab to take her to a little man who operated out of the back of a Turkish restaurant in a quiet corner of the Place D’Italie.

  Then she was in the back of another cab trying really hard not to cry. The fat-fingered bastard had ripped her off and there was nothing she could do but take the three bundles of US dollars that were all he would give her. Everything that she’d worked so hard for was gone now. All the jewellery from J
emima Pinkerton, which hardly compensated for all the bedpans and incontinence pants and wiping the ailing woman’s arse. The items she’d got from the Sedleys, who had suffered her presence with gritted teeth, treated her like a charity case, then threw her out because she wasn’t good enough for their precious Jos. The art deco brooch, which had belonged to Rawdon’s mother, given to her by Sir Pitt because he hoped it would prise her legs open. The gold hip flask, cigarette case and compact from Matilda Crawley, which had been her reward for nursing that ungrateful woman back from the brink of death.

  She asked the driver to stop at an ATM and then – she was properly crying by now – she withdrew pretty much everything she had in the bank. All the money she’d earned from endorsing products that she didn’t need or want. Cosying up to agents and publicists and all those businessmen in their suits and aftershave. Smiling, smiling, smiling every time their hands lingered in places that they shouldn’t have been touching in the first place. Smiling again when they made lewd remarks and improper suggestions.

  Becky Sharp had started with absolutely nothing. Everything she’d acquired had been hard won, hard fought for, and yet it all fitted into one of the leather bags she’d been given for letting a happily married man twice her age stick his hand up her dress. She wasn’t crying because she was sad or even because she couldn’t bear to part with the sum total of her life’s work, but because she was so angry that she wanted to break the cab’s windows with her fists and scream her rage into the night.

  She did neither of those things, though, but held herself very still and didn’t even argue with the driver when they got to Saint-Denis and he pulled into the kerb and said that he wouldn’t go any further.

  ‘Then I’m not going to pay you a single euro,’ she said and there was something in her voice, in the grim, set expression on her face that the man didn’t argue with, though he called her a bitch when she got out of the car.