Beggar Bride (8 page)

He reminds himself that thirteen is a difficult age.

He tells himself that the campaign to legalise such harmless substances is a sensible one and this one blight on their characters does not suggest that the twins are hovering on the edge of some criminal abyss.

He excuses himself by reasoning that this is the behaviour of mixed up adolescents, and of course his children are confused after all they have been through in the last couple of years.

But in all his anxious contemplations he is led back to the one fact that he cannot escape.

He is not enough for them.

They are uncanny and peculiar and he does not even like them.

With a father as pressured as himself, damn it, these children, these strange little girls seriously need some kind of mother.

H
AH. LOOK AT THIS
. Against all the odds, against astronomical odds, she’s done it.

With efforts of titanic proportions.

Envious glances from some of the women and interested looks from most of the men as she enters the foyer at Covent Garden feeling like a queen. Dress presented on her sixteenth birthday by Eileen Coburn—let out—pink suede jacket with ostrich feathers on hood and collar, and shoes from Lilian’s second-hand emporium in Bayswater, never worn, not a scratch on either sole, and a handbag to match which cost her a pound. Hair by David Bates and who hasn’t heard of him—she couldn’t pay, she slipped out of the salon after the cut, pretending to visit the loo.

Haunt of the perfumed and the privileged. The superior air is exotically perfumed, the chandeliers shine and quiver on jewels and furs, clumps of people, some in orbit—quite a jump from Waterloo, the station where she stopped at the ladies to remove her mac and make last minute adjustments, turning her back on the unswept litter, the sights and sounds of the homeless. It is easy to strike up a conversation when she is looking like this, not waif-like and pathetic, her childhood appeal to the middle classes, but delicate and petite like a piece of perfect porcelain, the kind of popular item you see for sale in the
Sunday Mirror
magazine… a whole collection of beautiful ladies, or thimbles, or dolls, or bone china plates decorated with the glum faces of the British Royal clan.

The more respectable papers offer Scrabble and Monopoly Boards for collectors with silver pieces in solid mahogany. Who needs them? Who buys them? And they’re certainly not cheap, either.

Ange smiles wryly. How very predictable men are—this type of man at any rate. A yuppie past his sell-by date, an oily, asinine fellow with a waistcoat and matching bow tie made out of an old Gladstone bag, not unlike Kenneth Clarke, and fully convinced that everyone likes him.

‘I am Aaron Teale.’ The young man with the programme in his hand invades her space with his garlic breath, too close for comfort, unprepared to beat about the bush. He peers through two shining curtains of hair. ‘How come I haven’t seen you here before?’

‘Said the prince to Cinderella!’ Angela Harper laughs at her own little joke. It is important that she be seen conversing with someone else, in case Fabian Ormerod or any of his party spots her. She will have to be tolerant and humour this person, and he could come in useful at the interval. Could he be here alone?

She is glad she took such pains with her hands, and the rings she chose from Selfridges look perfectly real in this glittering setting, no one would question their value on a woman so obviously chic and well-heeled. Now Aaron Teale has the temerity to take one of her hands in his own.

‘Meet my sister, Annabelle.’ He turns back to Ange with a kind of slobbering leer. ‘Who did you say you were?’

‘I didn’t actually,’ says Ange. ‘But I’m Angela Harper.’

But Annabelle’s vacant blue eyes are searching the crowd for somebody else. Ange has only a photograph, and a badly crumpled one at that, if only she could know what Fabian Ormerod looked like in person. It’s only when you know someone well that you can recognise them from behind. And who will he be accompanying tonight?

It hadn’t been hard to guess, as a man labelled patron of the arts in
Who’s Who,
that he would be interested in Covent Garden. She was jerked into this realisation when she noticed a copy of
Opera House
sticking out of somebody’s dustbin. She’d stopped in her tracks, she’d stared at the magazine for a good five minutes before the idea registered and she took it, carefully looking about her, for fear someone might think her a tramp.

Her days of delving in dustbins are over.

Why shouldn’t she label herself as a ‘Friend’? Surely the list of members would be too long, it wouldn’t be worthwhile keeping a check on every phone call. She’d dialled the number, giving the strong impression she was in regular contact, enquiring about available boxes. ‘I thought Cody/Ormerod had that box on that night,’ she attempted the casual remark, hands gripping the receiver like claws as she spoke.

‘No, let me see, Cody/Ormerod have the first Friday of every month…’

Ange let the girl witter on before she quietly put down the phone. And then it was merely a matter of contacting Fabian himself.

Not such a simple task when she put it to the test.

Undaunted, she argued her way through a barrage of officials before finally reaching the great man himself. He was perfectly charming, a kind man, concerned.

And from that telephone call she gathered that he would be there himself. A real stroke of luck. She wouldn’t have to work her way up through his underlings and their wives to reach him.

‘This is barmy,’ said Billy, as he watched her prepare, angry when she told him how much she’d risked to acquire the jacket. She mouthed at herself in the cracked mirror, glad of her talent for mimicry.

‘They were risks you should never have taken,’ he shouted, carrying on alarmed. ‘I ought to have known there was something up, all this going off on your own all of a sudden. Why, Ange? Why didn’t you tell me?’

She looked at him, ruffled and pink from sleep. Dozing in the daytime like an old, worn out man. ‘Because you would have stopped me doing this.’ She compressed her lips to a tight line over her lipstick. ‘I didn’t want the hassle,’ she said.

‘If we’d flogged that coat we could have got out of here.’

‘Yes. Exactly.
And we will, don’t you see?’

No, he couldn’t see. Billy can’t see further than the end of his sodding nose. ‘Oh bullshit, this is a game, Ange, nothing more than a fantasy. Nothing’ll come of it, can’t you see? OK, you’ve got this far, I’ll give you that, you’ve got a chance to meet this turd. And you’ve got all the gear to tart yourself up in. But now what, Ange? What’s he going to do now? Fall at your feet? Bollocks.’

‘Why can’t you have some faith in me, Billy? Just for a change?’

‘Oh? It’s that way round is it? Sorry! Sorry!’ He paused as his distress almost choked him. Billy glowered. ‘I’m that thick I almost imagined it was you who had no faith in me! You didn’t even give me a chance to tell you my ideas…’

Ange sighed. ‘I know your ideas, Billy,’ she said tiredly. ‘You’d buy a van…’

‘Not just any old van, Ange. Something we could turn into a home…’

Ange slapped her new patent-leather handbag down on the bed beside her. ‘Leave it out, Billy, for God’s sake. For the last sodding time I am not taking to the road like one of your hairy travellers, smoking skunk and weaving baskets. Dancing to the pipes… I want a real life,’ she shouted, ‘four solid walls and a garden.’

Billy, defeated, marched from the room.

When she had finished tarting herself up, after she’d carefully slid the party dress over her body and zipped it up, slipped on the shoes, finished her make-up, she walked into the sitting-room and stood in the middle of the floor, waiting for his reaction.

He sat in his chair, smoking, sulking, gradually aware of her presence. He took his eyes up to her face, he swallowed, ‘Oh Christ! Ange! Is that you?’

She laughed in delight. She swirled round. ‘D’you like it?’

He stood up, he came towards her and touched her lightly as if she was merely a ghostly image and might disappear if he blinked. ‘I do. I do like it. You don’t look real, Ange. You look like someone off the telly, someone out of
Baywatch.’

‘Like a doll, you mean?’

‘Yes. I suppose. Like one of those Barbies Petal’s got… but prettier.’

‘Well,’ Ange tossed her head, not bothering to remind him that Petal next door had carefully chopped off all her dolls’ long hair. A disturbed child, undoubtedly. She posed deliberately, like a model. ‘Do I stand a chance?’

Billy blew out a lungful of smoke. ‘Anyone’d want to screw you.’

‘That’s not what I mean. I’m not talking about screwing, you arsehole. You make it sound as if I’m a tart.’

‘No, no I didn’t mean that.’ Billy’s not too good at expressing himself at the best of times. ‘Not at all. Any man would want you… not just in that way… I mean, look at your hair!’

He is used to seeing Ange at her worst. Never at her best before except when they went to get married but then she was so pregnant her skirt didn’t do up properly, and her legs were swollen so she had to wear flat shoes which were worn through at the soles. Mostly Ange dresses for warmth, cheapness and convenience. Old sweaters and patched jeans are her favourite garments. Oh yes, her hair is always clean, but messy, scraped back and tied with a tatty old chiffon scarf, or hanging loose, untended. But look at her now. Suddenly he felt threatened and frightened and unprotected.

A woman who can look like this. What can she want with an arsehole like him, a man who cannot manage his life?

‘It’s for us, Billy,’ Ange moved towards him, careful not to touch him, not to spoil her careful image, and the flat stank of fried fishfingers, fag smoke and mildew. ‘I’m doing this for the three of us.’

Billy felt square and full. ‘I don’t like it, Ange,’ he said. ‘If this thing doesn’t work, or worse, if it does, you won’t want to come back to us.’

‘Don’t say that, Billy.’

‘I mean it. I worry.’

‘You have to trust me. You and Jacob mean the whole world to me and you know that.’

‘But you’re stepping out into a world that you know nothing about. You could well decide you like it better than this one.’

‘Well, if that is the case,’ said Ange, ‘we’ll all go and live in it together. That’s what this is all about, after all. See. Breaking free.’ She started to put on her coat. She asked him, ‘What will you do while I’m gone?’

Billy grinned. ‘Before or after Jacob wakes up? Well, I thought I’d pop out for a meal at the Ritz, a little flutter at the tables, a nightclub for some good jazz followed by a night of whoring…’

She banged him on the head with her handbag. Whoops, she could have dislodged a false nail. ‘But you’ll wait up?’

‘Of course I’ll wait up.’

‘I’m going to wear this old mac until I’m well away from here. I don’t want to be mugged before I even get started. Wish me luck, Billy.’

She’s arranged to meet that pushy sod Aaron Teale for a drink at the interval. Now, eager to take her place, Ange climbs the stairs and makes for the Cody/Ormerod box. Luckily there’s nobody here yet. But then they don’t need to arrive too early, do they, not with a fucking car delivering them straight to the theatre doors. She takes the fourth chair, she can hardly see the stage from here but she doesn’t want to look too forward and she is, after all, on the receiving end of Sir Fabian’s charity.

Yuk.

A bell rings in the distance. Ange is so pent up by now she could be one of the principal singers warming up backstage. Stage fright. Her small hands flutter in her lap, she is feeling nauseous and she is so exposed up here, all those people can see her. She is out of place and ridiculous. A finger will point at her in a moment, a giant finger coming suddenly down from the sky, not the lottery finger but sharp and reproachful like the many punishing fingers of childhood. Has she washed between her toes, behind her ears and inside her navel? Or has she just peed in the bath? What do the royals feel like, knowing that when they take their seats every eye will be turned on them? Sod it, what if she topples over the edge? Oh, she would love to be back in bed with Jacob stirring and stretching out his skinny little arms towards her.

Hush little baby don’t say a word Mumma’s gonna buy you a mocking bird…

When they eventually arrive they are rustling figures in the semi-darkness. Just in time, just before the orchestra strikes up and the curtain rises the Ormerod party take their places and there’s only time for a nod of greeting.

This is her chance. The chance of a lifetime. Wish too hard, too fiercely and fate turns against you, and yet how many chances does anyone get when their whole fate can be determined?

The first chance is at birth. Well, hell, Ange sodding well missed out on that one.

She studies Fabian’s features. Craggy. Straight, intelligent nose. A powerful man at the centre of things. Calm, cautious and calculating yet relentless in his pursuit of profit and, if necessary, utterly ruthless. What a catch! The white of his collar and cuffs stand out fluorescently in the dimness. Looks like the profile of the King you find on scuffed old pennies, and what sort of underpants does he wear? White cotton boxer shorts, probably. His companions turn out to be two haughty young women with diamonds on their wrists and ears. The programme is interminable, the art is to sit perfectly still, Billy could never manage this, but it gives Ange time to think and she concentrates all her thoughts upon Jacob.

Of his birth. So sudden. So frightening.

Of the love she saw in Billy’s eyes. Of the grave concern in the doctor’s, yet Jacob was alive, he breathed, he was hers! Of the toys and books and games and pretty baby clothes she started to notice in the shops, most recently bathed in the soft glow of Christmas, all bright and shiny and gay and colourful and all way out of reach.

‘We don’t need that crap,’ said Billy. ‘We’ll just love him more, that’s all. And who needs books? We’ll make up our own stories.’

Well, that’s what Ange is doing now. So this is her story.