Beggar Bride (2 page)

Balls. So what does Sandra know, ugly old frump, miserable old spinster? Easy to say, when you’re in work and you’ve got the facilities. Social workers are well paid, aren’t they? How’s she going to get fresh milk daily when it’s heavy to carry and difficult to manage, like huge packets of cereal, when you’re climbing up six flights of stairs with pushchair and child? The milk would go off in no time, and powdered’s cheaper, it lasts longer. And eggs and babies are so sodding messy…

At least she knows that these Heinz foods have all the right vitamins and minerals. Just because they’re poor and homeless Jacob’s not going to suffer any more than he has to!

‘We have to keep pestering, you know that. And we’re moving up the list, that’s what they told us last time.’

‘They tell you what they want, just to see the back of you.’

‘Billy,’ Ange says strictly, brushing her long night-black hair ready to pin in an untidy knot, ‘we’re going. And while we’re out you can look in the job centre again.’

‘Shit, Ange, I was there last week…’

‘Or I will.’

She’s not going to put up with this. She’s not even going to discuss it. She’s heard his arguments so many times but other people get jobs don’t they? OK, they’re not the sort of jobs you’d choose, but one thing leads to another and who knows? You can’t be negative all the time.

But Billy can.

Billy is.

She puts her arms around his neck and snuffles his ear and tells him everything is all right.

Ange has worked it all out. There are only a few ways to be free and she’s ruled out all but one.

Look at them now, this little family. The dispossessed. The homeless. What do the Harpers possess which they could utilise in a practical manner to break free from their present shackled predicament? What do they have of value in today’s cruel, money-dominated world?

Forget about particular talents. Qualifications. Ambition. Power. Forget it.

What they have is Angela’s beauty and no, she’s not being vain, and nor is her beauty the sort to exist in the eye of a few aesthetic beholders. Hers is a topical, up to the minute,
Marie Clare, Elle
kind of beauty. Since childhood she has been beautiful and up to now it has always been something she’s tried to underplay and regarded as a handicap, personal experience taught her this. She keeps her beauty shabby, scrubs it and wraps it in second-hand clothes. She deprives it of make-up. For the wrong kind of men are attracted to beauty, and women dislike it, distrust it.

Many times, just lately, she has wondered if she should have been a model… when you read what they earn, my God. But her one experience of that twisted world had turned her off it for life. Encouraged by Billy she had screwed up her courage and crept down to the basement studio, following the arrows, attracted by the advertisement.

She must be naive, she thought, when the young man asked her to take off her clothes. She ought to have known she would have to do that. As a model it was something she would surely have to get used to.

She posed, blushing to the roots of her hair, on a furry stool that twizzled round, and when he asked her to rub her nipples to make them stand up, she obliged.

‘Oh you’re lovely,’ leered the acned young man, moving her into new and ever more shameful positions. ‘I’ll be in touch as soon as the pictures develop,’ he told her before she stumbled back up the steps, puce with embarrassment.

Of course he was never in touch.

‘Soft porn,’ snorted Billy who is supposed to be streetwise. ‘Should’ve guessed. We’ve been had. You’ll be circulating in men’s mucky pockets for a couple of quid by now.’

She could feel the shreds of tobacco, the sticky sweet papers, the dirty, useless, one penny coins. She could taste the metal in her mouth. ‘I should have stayed on and taken my exams,’ said Ange, ‘instead of shacking up with you.’

Ange is fed up with being dependent, desperate, taken for a ride by politicians, landlords and fly-boys.

Old people are miserable because they could have had fun but they didn’t. Scared. Trapped by worry and responsibilities. Ange and Billy had fun.

No one can say they never had fun.

The trouble was getting pregnant.

Now she feeds Jacob with her back propped against the wall, slumped across the bed, watching Billy’s reluctant progress. His clothes go on as they came off, T-shirt and sweater bonded together, pants and jeans as one. Not bothering to queue in the bathroom he brushes his strong white teeth in the saucepan water, now tepid. He pushes a flannel over his face, runs a comb through his tangled blond hair.

Oh, he might be a screwball but she loves him, she loves him. She can’t blame Billy, not for anything. Billy has done his best. If there’d been work he would have taken it. He’ll put his hand to anything, hod-carrier, dishwasher, cleaning on the Underground, waiter in a Pizza Hut, and once his boyish good looks got him a job as doorman at a tourist hotel, far posher than this one. He wore a splendid uniform and looked like a drummer boy in a picture, brave, proud and good, on his way to war with a flag. The wages were poor but the tips were amazing. But then they discovered that he had no licence and was moving customers’ expensive cars. He is so unlucky. Something always goes wrong to bugger him up, not his fault.

What will he think when he hears of her plans? Are they plans?

Perhaps that won’t be necessary. Perhaps they’ll hear some good news today. But if not, whatever Billy says Ange is determined to press ahead, he might call it prostitution but it’s not, not when you only go with one man. She has thought it all out, down to the smallest detail. And she wouldn’t be only a mistress, either, she’d be secure, married, a wife to another man.

Bigamy? So what? There are worse crimes than that, much worse. Living as they are forced to live, for a start. If that’s not a crime, what is?

She knows exactly what she wants. The only real problem will be how to find the rich man of the prunes.

T
HE MORNING EXPERIENCE OF
the Hon. Sir Fabian Ormerod, financier, widower, divorcee, son of a peer of the realm and knighted in his own right, differs from Ange’s in a multitude of ways. Coffee is brought to him on a tray as soon as he presses his handy button, and his day’s appointments appear on the screen beside his gigantic bed. Already his clothes are laid out, his trousers pressed, his striped shirt aired and crisp as if returned from a laundry… Estelle’s ironing has always been impressive.

His days are full.

No time for painful self-reflection, no need to explore his
raison d’être.
Everyone needs him, everyone wants to speak with him and that is why no calls are put through to his house in Cadogan Square, tucked between embassies, they must wait till he gets to his office at ten.

Naturally he insists on some time for himself.

He joins his daughter, Honesty, for breakfast, a formal breakfast laid out in the dining-room, the way they did before Helena died.

He helps himself to scrambled egg. ‘What are your plans today, darling?’ A mindless kiss on the head as he passes his daughter’s chair.

He hardly listens as she reels off her list. Long ago, Fabian discovered, it was necessary to sift the intelligence reaching his brain, binning the vast majority of it, putting some on hold, and keeping the essentials on screen to be dealt with soonest.

Honesty’s day can be safely binned. The hairdresser’s to get her highlights touched up. Coffee with Nisha, shopping in the Arcade, lunch with Adelle, and the afternoon playing tennis indoors at the club. What a waste of an education, but Honesty’s happy, she’s not on drugs, and surely, these days, you can’t ask for more.

The round, creamy-faced Honesty, fresh from finishing school in France, is surely too shrewd to go wrong like so many of her Sloaney cronies. Give a little, take a little, is her favourite adage. With ease she slipped into her mother’s role after the divorce, and again, after Helena’s death. Daddy’s little helper. Helena, his second wife, was a great big brute of a woman. Later, when Honesty studied the life of Henry the Eighth at school, that poxed old monster, she compared herself dramatically with Mary, daughter of the lawful queen.

Old-fashioned as he is, it was always obvious that Fabian would prefer a male heir to his monetary kingdom. So, with all the imperiousness of a feudal lord, he put aside his first wife, Ffiona, in order to marry Helena, late lamented, whose spirit still lingers in the house, particularly in the choice of carpets, and begat a couple more useless girls.

Oh, Honesty knows which side her bread is buttered and drifted through her difficult phases as easy as sand through a timer. And here she is now, a survivor, draped in pearls and perched on the satin seat of a chair which would gladden the heart of the nation if it were ever presented on the
Antiques Roadshow.
But Fabian is not remotely interested in the value of household objects, of the originals which hang on his tasteful walls, of the dishes that are placed on his table or the jade pieces he used to collect set into niches around his home, in the days when collecting seemed to matter.

Honesty’s monthly allowance would make Ange gasp.

So would the size of her birthday presents… last year a Saab convertible, top of the range, with a CD player, and reeking of squeaky leather.

Give a little, take a little.

The giving part is easy. Well, isn’t she Daddy’s favourite daughter?

Any challengers to her superior role are running well behind.

Pandora and Tabitha, Helena’s daughters, the plain and stoical twins. Still at The Rudge and likely to remain there for another four years, thank God.

Her father’s leather-bound social diary lies on the table opened flat at February 10th. ‘Remember the Farqhuars’ party tonight… they’ve taken the hall at the Natural History Museum. So you’d be better to come home first, unless you want your dress suit delivered to the office later.’

Fabian dabs his mouth with a snow-white napkin. There are snow-white streaks in his curly black hair, and in his semi-Victorian whiskers. ‘I’ll come back,’ he says, ‘it’s simpler.’

‘And bear in mind that the twins are coming this weekend. Try to leave some windows open in your schedule. And by the way, will you be here, or at home?’

His quick brown eyes are restless like a fox, eager to get on. ‘Here. I can’t be away from London at the moment.’

He would far rather be home where the heart is. He isn’t home enough for his liking for home is a comfortable medieval manor set in one thousand acres of Devonshire parkland, mostly wooded. A collection of armour in the hall keeps company with a few dead stags, a medieval dovecote is central to the enchanting gardens. Mummy and Daddy live in the Old Granary and Nanny Barber lives in the cottage. Excellent riding country. Easily reached by helicopter but far enough from the City to feel you have left your cares behind.

Half an hour later, spot on 9.30 am, Roberts arrives at the door in the silver Rolls. Fabian picks up his fur-trimmed coat and his briefcase and bids his eldest daughter farewell; he is handed from person to person preciously, like a bucket of water to put out a fire. Rarely alone and hard to keep up with and that’s how he likes to play it. From daughter to chauffeur to doorman, from receptionist to personal assistant, bleeped notices of his important progress go before him like a page proclaiming a royal visit. The great presence. There’s a little setback this morning when Roberts misjudges the distance and
bumps into a car at the lights. Fabian reads the
Financial Times
while his chauffeur sorts the business out. There’s a girl among the small crowd on the pavement staring in… for a second Fabian catches her eye and sees… hostility? Vitality? Or is it downright envy? She carries a baby in her arms.

At the office he swishes through the swing door of the building, clicks across the yards of marble, passes the colonnades and then it’s up in the executive lift, up to the penthouse on the top floor, a totally self-sufficient home should one need to stay overnight.

The serious morning papers are laid out on his enormous desk. He frowns to see the cheerier tabloids piled in a heap beside them today.

‘They’re at it again, I’m afraid, Sir Fabian, the politics of envy, comparing the wages of one chairman with another…’

‘Pitiful. And I’m splashed across the front I see.’ Not a bad picture, he muses to himself. ‘These damn privatised utilities, that’s what started this ruddy thing off.’ He is reading as he sits down, handing his coat and briefcase to Simon, fingering the
Sun
with disdain. ‘Hah, I see they’re comparing my pay with the managers of the London Ambulance Service this time, makes a change I suppose.’

The dapper Simon laughs apologetically, half relaxed and half at attention in the way of those who serve the needs of the powerful. ‘They’ve asked for an interview, sir.’

‘Hah.’

‘Naturally I refused…’

‘Naturally. Anything else here I should know about?’

‘Nothing else. And here’s the brief for this morning’s meeting.’

If only some of his miserable critics understood the kind of responsibilities that sit on Fabian’s manly shoulders. The need to censure and control. Daily he deals with not millions but billions of pounds that pass through these hallowed halls. Far easier to skim through the papers himself rather than listen to Simon’s summary for his is a quick and succinct mind. Preparing for the coming meeting he highlights the main points in yellow, crosses out the extraneous, and question marks a few paragraphs. If only other people possessed his knack of getting straight to the nub of a subject. Round and round they go, unable to see what stares them in the face, waiting to have it pointed out to them… and that’s where he comes in. But, by God, he can’t do everything.

Between them, Simon Chalmers his personal assistant and Ruth Hubbard, his secretary, will organise a car for the twins this weekend, will contact the school, will make sure Estelle knows and prepares for the arrival of these motherless children. The lack of a wife doesn’t bother Fabian, although he admits he sometimes envies his humbler colleagues the comfort of a woman at the end of a day, company in bed. Some men in his exalted position, several of his acquaintances in fact, will take a woman, pay for a woman, there are agencies dealing with orders as easy to get as fillet steak, but these painted harpies are not for Fabian.