The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp

by Sarra Manning

  There was a man called Raoul waiting for her on the corner, though he couldn’t have been more than fourteen. He escorted her through the back alleys of a Paris far away from the pretty Haussmann boulevards or the twinkling lights that reflected on the inky-black water of the Seine. Here it was all boarded-up windows and doors, daubed with gang tags and racist epithets. Hard-faced girls worked each corner and further into the shadows, there were mounds of skin and bones sleeping on sodden cardboard, shaking for a fix or a drink or because their demons wouldn’t let go.

  Becky held her breath. She was better than this, she’d done everything she could to escape this and yet, here she was again.

  Eventually, they came to what looked like another derelict doorway. Her escort banged on the corrugated iron, a door opened and Becky stood her ground and spoke in the expletive-laden French she’d learnt at her mother’s knee. No, she wasn’t going inside. What was going to happen was that they’d bring Rawdon to her and she’d give them the money. No Rawdon, no cash. And no, she didn’t care if they did break one of his fingers for each minute she wasted, she was staying right here.

  It took three minutes for Rawdon to appear in the doorway, all his fingers sadly intact, accompanied by three heavies that could have found more honest work as extras on his film. ‘I’m all right,’ he said, like Becky even cared. ‘I think I might have a broken rib, though.’

  ‘Good thing broken ribs don’t show up on camera then, isn’t it?’

  Becky handed over the cash and for one heart-stopping, gut-clenching moment, the fat man with a bullet tattooed on his forehead, his tracksuit stretched grotesquely over his elephantine limbs, said it wasn’t enough.

  ‘Soixante,’ he said and he spat on the ground, phlegm landing on the toe of one of Becky’s limited-edition Prada sneakers. No point in wearing heels if you might have to run for it.

  ‘We agreed fifty, you fat fuck.’ Then she spat back because Rawdon was just a poor little rich boy, a slum tourist, dipping a toe in the filth and the fury of the back alleys, knowing that it would wash off.

  But Becky knew these streets. Knew that some things would never wash off even if you scrubbed yourself red raw trying.

  ‘Cinquante,’ she said again. ‘Not one cent more.’

  The three men talked among themselves about whether they should take the money and break Rawdon’s fingers, maybe kneecap him too, while they made Becky watch. Becky’s hand didn’t even shake as she brought it to her mouth to cover her yawn.

  ‘I haven’t got all night,’ she snapped. ‘And I’ve got a driver two streets away who’s going to call some people if I’m not back in five minutes. Says his brother knows a guy called Ali, maybe you know him too?’

  The man who’d bought her jewels for a tenth of what they were worth had told her that the neighbourhood was controlled by two gangs. This bunch of hoodlums in hoodies from the Côte d’Ivoire were deadly rivals of a Muslim faction run by an old guy from Algiers who had a glass eye, one ball and went by the name of Ali.

  ‘Fuck you then,’ the fat guy hissed and he snatched the bag out of Becky’s hold, ripping one of her nails as he did so, then Rawdon was thrust towards her.

  ‘What did he say?’ Rawdon asked, as thank God, the door was slammed in their faces. His knowledge of French was only sufficient to order a round of drinks. ‘What did you say?’

  Becky said nothing but started walking, trying to remember the way out of the maze of tiny streets. Rawdon hobbled after her, hissing slightly, hampered by unseen injuries sustained during his abduction.

  ‘Becky?’ he bleated. ‘I’m sorry. Don’t be mad at me. I hate it when you’re angry at me. Come on! Say you forgive your little Rawdy.’

  She turned another corner and they were out of the darkness and on to a main road. It was still the worst neighbourhood in Paris, but there were streetlights that worked, cafes and bars, shops selling everything from exotic produce to wigs. It was safety of a sort, though everyone turned to look at Becky and Rawdon as if they were from another planet. In Saint-Denis, the third arrondissement was another planet.

  ‘Becky! You have to speak to me sooner or later. It’s OK. I’m good. We’re good. No bones broken, apart from maybe a rib. Did I mention that they took away my phone but …’

  ‘SHUT THE FUCK UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! I WISH THEY’D BROKEN EVERY FUCKING BONE IN YOUR USELESS BODY!’ She was shouting, hitting Rawdon, raining her fists down on whatever part of him she could reach. Not his face, but everywhere else including his suspected broken rib, and she was glad when he cried out.

  People stopped looking at them, because here fights were nothing special, nothing remarkable.

  ‘Becky! Stop it! I’m sorry,’ Rawdon cried and he managed to grab her wrist as she kept pounding on him with her other hand closed into a fist. ‘I’m sorry!’

  One last blow to the side of his head, enough to make his ear ring, and Becky stopped, wrenched herself free from Rawdon’s grip. She let her arms hang down, tried to slow her ragged breaths even as she stared up at him with a savage expression that would be the last thing Rawdon Crawley would remember, many years later, when he was on his deathbed.

  ‘You promised to look after me, then you promised that at least you’d look after yourself, and you can’t even do that,’ she reminded him in a voice that was murderous and low. ‘You’re a dirty, lying bastard. It makes me sick how weak you are.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rawdon repeated. If he could say it enough times, maybe it would wipe out everything: his debts, his weakness, his betrayal.

  ‘I should leave you,’ Becky threatened even though she currently had nowhere else to go. That face of his, healing up nicely, just one fresh cut above his eyebrow, was the only liquid asset she still had. ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Because … because I love you!’ Rawdon said with the air of a man pulling a rabbit out of a hat on his third attempt.

  ‘You’re going to have to do better than that,’ Becky said and she turned away, started walking again, slower this time, all energy spent.

  Rawdon sighed as if she were being unreasonable, impossible, then in a few quick strides, caught up with her. ‘I’m not going to do it any more,’ he promised yet again. ‘Not any of it. The drugs, the poker games.’ He dared to nudge her arm so when she glanced across at him, he was smiling in that way that he thought she found irresistible because she was a much, much better actor than he would ever be. ‘You do still love your Rawdy, don’t you?’

  That dark, viscous rage boiled in her veins again. ‘If my lousy father taught me one lousy thing it’s that you only gamble when you have nothing to lose. You had everything and now it’s all gone.’

  ‘But we still have each other, right?’ He actually dared to bat his eyelashes at her, so Becky felt justified in elbowing him in his suspected broken rib again.

  ‘Did you hear me? We have nothing. No money, nothing to fall back on, no plan B, and this is all on you. You’ve spoilt it all.’

  ‘I’ll unspoil it. I’ll make it better,’ Rawdon said and he stepped in front of his wife, blocked her path so he could put his hands on her shoulders, lean his forehead against hers. ‘Look, I’ll get in touch with Mattie. Make things up with her and we’ll all be friends again. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  Rage gave way to the faintest flicker of hope. ‘Do you think she’ll listen? She’s still very angry with you,’ Becky reminded Rawdon.

  ‘Yeah, but unlike you, she can’t stay mad at me for long.’

  Chapter 27

  It was late October and Becky and Rawdon were huddled outside a dingy club in Montmartre, a chill wind whistling around them. It was four weeks since Becky had bailed Rawdon out, and they were at the wrap party for How to Live Well on Nothing a Year; never had a film been more aptly titled. Rawdon was chain-smoking Gauloises and Becky had come out with him because the production accountant kept trying to talk to her about the rent demands on the apartment.

&nb
sp; ‘The film is way over budget, so I don’t see what difference our rent is going to make,’ she complained to Rawdon. ‘It’s so petty.’

  ‘I’d have been perfectly happy to stay in the cheap hotel in Beaugrenelle,’ Rawdon said, blowing out a stream of smoke so he looked like a very louche dragon. Along with all his other bad habits, he was meant to have stopped smoking too, but there were only so many things that Becky could ride him for without him calling her a nagging bitch and without that deeply unflattering furrow appearing between her eyebrows. She wasn’t ready for Botox quite yet so she counted to ten and contented herself with pointedly fanning the air. ‘Nobody’s forcing you to stand here and watch me smoke.’

  ‘If I go inside and talk to other people, then you sulk about me ignoring you. You get so needy when you’re not the centre of attention,’ Becky complained and she could feel her brows knitting together.

  ‘Ha! That’s rich coming from you,’ Rawdon said with a sneer, as deep within the breast pocket of his leather jacket, his phone started to ring. ‘Saved by the bell.’ He retrieved his mobile. ‘It’s Mattie. Very late for her to be calling.’

  In the end, it had only taken a week for Dame Matilda to come round, which left Becky fuming for all the lost time they’d burned through since parting. Perhaps it was because the last few years had made her frailer and more aware of the end of her mortal coil, but Mattie was now taking Rawdon’s calls and when they got back to London (which couldn’t come soon enough) he would have to redouble his efforts. It was the very least he could do, especially as his previous film had bombed and everything indicated that this one was going to go straight to streaming release if it was ever released at all. Despite Becky’s ambitions to be a kept woman, they were existing on whatever funds she could scrounge up endorsing any old tat on her Instagram, from waxing strips to carb-free, dairy-free, sugar-free chocolate, which had been banned in the US for giving people chronic diarrhoea.

  ‘But she is calling, so that’s something,’ Becky said, her irritation fading, not even minding the cigarette smoke as she moved closer to Rawdon so she could try and hear what his aunt was saying. Maybe this was the call where the dame finally moved on from referring to Becky as ‘that girl’.

  ‘Mattie? Mattie! Is everything … Briggs! Why are you calling me on Mattie’s phone?’ Rawdon raised his eyebrows at Becky, who couldn’t make out a single word, just what sounded like sobbing on the other end of the line.

  Then Rawdon staggered down the five steps that took him to the kerb so he could sit down heavily, legs splayed out. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he muttered brokenly. ‘But she was fine when I spoke to her yesterday. Hang on.’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece so he could turn to Becky, who was standing expectantly behind him. ‘God, Becky … Mattie’s dead. Died in her sleep.’

  Something cold slithered its way down her spine. ‘Oh?’ Becky stood frozen to the spot. Then she looked up to the navy-blue sky, tried in vain to find a star, and lifted up her glass of cheap cava in a silent salute to the demanding old cow of whom she’d actually been quite fond. She’d even had a grudging respect for the way Mattie had seen right through her. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. ‘I’m so sorry, Rawdy.’

  But she was already forgotten. Rawdon was talking to Briggs again, asking with choked emotion about the arrangements for the funeral, then suddenly the phone clattered from his slack fingers into the road and he let out an eldritch howl that made every hair on Becky’s body that hadn’t been lasered away stand to attention.

  ‘What? What is it?’ she asked but Rawdon slumped, head in his hands, and started to cry.

  It was left to Becky to retrieve his phone. ‘Briggs? It’s Becky.’ She looked up again at the sombre sky. ‘Will you please stop making that awful noise? I can’t hear what you’re saying.’

  Briggs swallowed snottily a couple of times. ‘Becky … oh, Becky. It’s terrible.’

  ‘I’m sure you must be devastated. I know I am. I was convinced that she’d eventually summon me round to Primrose Hill and we’d say a few more horrible things to each other, then finally make up. But Mattie hadn’t been well and at least she went peacefully,’ Becky said delicately. Oh, so very delicately. She was shocked at the news, even sad about it, but was it too soon to broach the subject of whether Mattie had been to see her solicitor lately? ‘Had she been out and about much recently?’

  ‘And Sir Pitt. When all’s said and done, I suppose he must have loved her in his own way … oh! Oh …!’ It was no use. Briggs had descended into incoherent weeping all over again.

  Becky had no choice but to hang up the phone, and tug on Rawdon’s hair until he lifted his tear-swollen face up to hers.

  ‘It’s very sad,’ Becky said and she hoped that she sounded as if she meant it. She didn’t have that much experience when it came to expressing her true feelings. Feelings were best tucked out of sight where they couldn’t get in anyone’s way. ‘But you have to stop crying because I can’t get any sense out of Briggs. He said something about your father …?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Rawdon burst out.

  Becky stared at him in confusion. ‘What? Who’s dead?’

  ‘Dad’s dead too. Briggs said …’ Rawdon’s face – his patrician, perfect features – collapsed in on itself. Becky chewed the inside of her cheeks and waited for him to gather himself, as Mattie would have said.

  ‘How can Sir Pitt be dead?’ Becky shook her head. ‘You must have misunderstood.’

  ‘Briggs …’ Rawdon tensed his muscles, to hold the tears back. ‘Briggs said that when he called Dad this morning to tell him the news, he – literally – dropped down dead. Massive heart attack.’ Rawdon’s bottom lip was wobbling like a kite on a windy day. ‘I always thought I hated the bastard, but knowing that I’m never going to get the chance to tell him how much I hated him breaks my heart.’

  With a silent apology to the Marc Jacobs dress she was wearing, Becky sank down on the kerb next to Rawdon so she could take his hand and wind her fingers through his. ‘You might have hated him, but you loved him too,’ she said softly. ‘That’s the deal with fathers, no matter what bastards they are, and no matter how much the hate feels like love and the love feels like hate.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s exactly like that,’ Rawdon agreed. ‘You always understand. You know me better than anyone ever has.’

  ‘That’s because I love you,’ Becky said, which was a lie. Really it was because Rawdon wasn’t a very complex character, and had nothing in the way of layers. ‘I know right now that it feels like the world is ending but you still have me. Everything will be fine.’

  Though Becky had been feeling quite upset about Mattie and fairly ambivalent about Sir Pitt, now she dared to feel a little optimistic.

  Between Rawdon’s aunt and his father, at least one of them (but please, please, please let it be both) had to have left Rawdon something in their will.

  MEET BRITAIN’S NEWEST MILLIONAIRE!

  Sir Pitt Crawley’s eldest son inherits two fortunes on the same day …

  While a nation mourns the passing of two of Britain’s greatest actors, Dame Matilda Crawley and her younger brother, Sir Pitt Crawley, one member of the Crawley family has every reason to celebrate.

  Pitt Junior, Sir Pitt’s son, has been named the sole beneficiary of both his aunt’s and his father’s wills. Dame Matilda left over £25 million to her nephew as well as her six-bedroom house in London’s trendy Primrose Hill, a chateau in the South of France and a stunning villa in Palm Springs, California.

  As eldest son of Sir Pitt, the lucky lad will also inherit Queen’s Crawley, a palatial Georgian mansion in forty acres in rural Hampshire, a Chelsea townhouse and a personal fortune estimated at around £10 million, despite the legendary thespian claiming to be broke.

  So, while the luvvies of London get ready to say goodbye to Dame Matilda, who died peacefully in her sleep last week, and Sir Pitt who died suddenly of a heart attack on hearing the news, we’re sure Pitt Junio
r has the champagne on ice.

  It’s quite the rags-to-riches story for the newly minted millionaire. While his more famous younger brother, Rawdon, inherited his father’s and aunt’s acting talent, poor Pitt Junior is a struggling writer whose greatest claim to fame is a collection of short stories that sold only two hundred copies.

  Now Pitt Junior has star billing and Rawdon, whose last film, The Girl I Left Behind, bombed at the box office, and was recently involved in a bar fight, is rumoured to have been cut off without a penny. At least Rawdon has his wife of one year, ravishing Rebecca Sharp, model and Instagram queen, to dry his tears, but it must be small consolation.

  Meanwhile Pitt Junior, who was living in a grotty flat in Finchley, has been seeing Jane Sheepshanks, a marketing executive, for the last five years. A close friend of the late Dame Matilda claims that it was her affection for Jane, who’d been devoted to the ailing Lyndon Place star, that was behind her decision to leave all her dosh to Pitt Junior. What are the odds that gentle Jane now makes Pitt put a ring on it? She certainly deserves it and lucky Pitt can certainly afford it!

  Chapter 28

  ‘That fucking bastard!’ Rawdon held up his iPad so that Becky could see the Daily Mail article he’d been reading, then flung the device on the floor of the room in the Novotel on the outskirts of Paris where he and Becky had decamped after they’d done a moonlight flit from the fancy apartment.

  ‘Which fucking bastard are you talking about? Your father, your aunt or your brother?’ Becky asked calmly. Outwardly she was serene, but on the inside she was screaming like a wolverine.

  ‘My fucking father, he always hated me. Couldn’t stand that I might be better than him. A better actor, better looking … fuck him!’ The croissants that Becky had stolen from next door’s breakfast tray (served them right for leaving it outside their room) were Rawdon’s next victims as he hurled them out of the window. Then he went back to pacing. And ranting. Something about Pitt Junior and how he’d always broken Rawdon’s toys when they were little. ‘And Matilda. I loved her, Becky, I fucking loved her but what a vindictive bitch. She always said that she was going to leave her money to me. When someone makes a promise like that, you live your life in a certain way, with certain expectations. God, I’d have signed on for the big-bucks Hollywood blockbusters if she hadn’t said I was going to inherit her millions …’