Authors: Gillian White
Beggar Bride (42 page)
‘It is your duty to tell Fabian the truth about his birth. High or low, we all deserve to know the truth about our roots.’
Is that true? Is it? Both are silent for several minutes. Ange looks at the woman before her, so sadly wronged, so bitter, so lonely and finally driven to this. And I could have had so much, she thinks, guiltily. This great truth is something Fabian, so strong, so self-assured, so arrogant, would never be able to bear. It would wound him too deeply. ‘No,’ she tells Sandra firmly, ‘Fabian must never know, and if you are tempted to tell him out of revenge in order to bring him down then I will go to the law with your letters from Aunty Val. You’d lose your job, Sandra, your pension, everybody’s respect. Knowing who you are is not always the right thing. This is a private tragedy which happened a very long time ago, and there’s been too much suffering already because of it. I don’t want Fabian touched by this. Nothing more needs to be said. Ever! I warn you now, leave him alone.’
They have travelled by way of such a vicious, such a tortuous circle.
‘So what did happen to Helena, after all?’
Billy says, ‘Nobody knows. The police don’t know. Callister obviously believes it was his witch-doll which did the trick… and who knows, maybe it did. Or maybe Honesty did it and has blocked all memory. She certainly must have wanted to when she realised Helena was carrying Callister’s child.’
It’s all too much. It’s all too tangled and confusing. You can think and think and not come anywhere near the truth. Best to forget, to concentrate on the present. Ange sighs, closes her eyes tight to the past. ‘This is a boring place, Billy, you’re right. And it’s bleak. And it’s dead. Why did we sodding well come here?’
‘It was your idea,’ Billy reminds her, as they drive along the long, straight roads of Weston-super-Mare, passing through crescents and squares, passing boring, Thirties semis, with boring rockeries in all the front gardens, and heather, both blue and white. But Ange longs to be boring, to rid herself of the loss, the yearning. The boys are in the back of the Range Rover, sound asleep, two brothers almost identical.
Ange imagines how it will be in a minute. Out of the house with the blue paintwork will come a woman in a skirt and blouse with a crinkly perm too tight for her head. The man behind her will not be handsome, just ordinary, hard-working, old-fashioned, worried about the things that people do worry about, like getting his guttering sorted out and whether the pension he’s opted out of was better than the one he’s in now and blaming himself for his failure as a father.
Billy will say, ‘Mum? Dad?’
The woman will fling out her arms when she sees who has arrived. She might nearly trip down her garden path in her effort to reach her lost son more quickly.
Dear God. After all these years!
‘Oh, Billy, why didn’t you tell me? And look—such beautiful, beautiful children, and, oh,’ she will stand back, clasping her hands, ‘and such a lovely wife! I knew you’d come. And you came after all. Welcome home!
Oh, welcome home!’
Billy’s father will stand behind his wife in an old-fashioned gesture of protection, beaming, embarrassed, pleased, but unsure how to show it other than by shaking his head.
As she takes the prodigal into her arms, on her face will be all the love, and in her glistening eyes will be all the joy in the world.
‘We’re home, Ange,’ Billy will sigh.
‘I know,’ she will tell him, smiling, suddenly aware of the littleness of the things that can really touch her. ‘Thank God. And at sodding last. Happy ever after.’
But Ange is fantasising again. Perhaps she needs to live in a dream, fantasies were what her childhood was built on, after all. The reality was unbearable. The bungalow door is closed tight and nobody comes down the path.
The boys are sleeping so Ange joins Billy at the front door. They ring the bell again, and listen, and wait, Ange still certain in her own mind of the kind of welcome she and Billy are about to receive. There is even a ready smile on her face.
‘Yes?’
This cannot be Billy’s mum, this woman is far too old.
‘I’m looking for Mr and Mrs Harper, they used to live here.’
‘And who might you be?’
‘I am their son, Billy.’
The old woman looks suspicious. Her lips close together and pleat, her elderly eyebrows arch. ‘They never had any children. They never mentioned any children to me.’
‘Where are they? Have they moved?’
‘You obviously didn’t hear then,’ said the grey-haired, moth-balled old woman, eager to close the door.
‘What?’ asks Billy. ‘What didn’t we hear?’
‘Well, they won the lottery last year, one of the big jackpot winners, several million I believe. So naturally they sold up and left. Went to live in Spain. I bought the bungalow from them. Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ and the door closes quietly but firmly round the smell of simmering mince.
Billy and Ange stare at each other aghast as the truth slowly dawns.
‘I can’t approach them now,’ says Billy. ‘They’ll think…’
‘Yes, yes, of course they will.’
‘They’ll suspect that all I want is…’
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ says Ange, knowing the feeling only too well. ‘This is quite unbelievable.’
Unbelievable. But fitting. ‘There’s nothing I can do then?’ Billy asks, dumbfounded.
‘Only one thing. But maybe it wouldn’t work.’
‘What?’ asks Billy, interested.
‘Well, you’d have to really be their son,’ Ange tells him, smiling. ‘And behave properly for once!’
‘I can’t,’ says Billy. ‘I can’t do that. It’s far too late for that.’
Poor Billy. She will never betray him. Not after all they’ve been through. Her life won’t be too bad, not too bad at all. She will care for him, look after him… ‘I know, Billy,’ says Ange, sadly turning away. ‘I know.’
‘Perhaps I could pretend, pretend to love them as they pretended to love me all those years. After all the whole of life is a game, I mean, look we’ve proved that. So I would have been rich eventually anyway. I had no need to go through all this. If only I’d just stayed here and been a good and dutiful son.’
Billy laughs away the joke and hugs her tightly. Like a clown.
‘If only. Yeah. But that’s the name of the game I suppose.’
Ange gets back into the car with Billy’s laughter ringing in her ears. Let’s pretend, let’s pretend. She whispers his name, loving the sound of it, into the wind. If life really is a game then Ange is the greatest pretender of all, polished, professional at wishing for too many things. She’ll see Fabian on high days and holidays, dutifully fulfilling her role as his wife, and when she’s with Billy she’ll spend her time yearning for someone way out of reach. She has been his bride, his beggar bride, and on oath she swore to be his. And if this is not just a passing passion she is doomed to be his for the rest of her life.
Her smile does not waver. She ruffles his hair. ‘Get with it, Billy, come on. Let’s go and find some chips.’
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Gillian White
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
978-1-4804-0218-8
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
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