Beggar Bride (20 page)

Courtney Biffen is hot, confused and in pain. ‘But Honesty will have her own money by then so why would she need to keep her boyfriend under wraps?’

Tabitha keeps watch, chameleon-like in the spinney in her jade-green games slip. ‘Honesty’s trust is nothing,’ she says with scorn, ‘compared to the riches we’ll all be sharing when Daddy dies. He can’t pass on the house or the land of course, that’s entailed to his cousin’s son, Giles, in America.’ They only met him once, and if Tabitha’s memory serves her rightly he was a puny, weedy little boy. Rather boring. ‘But there’s the pictures, the antiques, the jade, the first editions and the statues all worth millions, oh yes, he’ll strip the house before he hands it over, we’ve heard him say so. There’s a loophole in the legal documents and Daddy’s found it.’

‘So Honesty has to keep in with him for years yet?’ How awful. Courtney cannot believe that anyone could endure so many years of deception just for a few million pounds. ‘I’d take what I had and disappear into the forest with the beast, if it was me,’ she says, hugging her chubby legs somewhat longingly.

‘And, what is worse, it was the beast who discovered Mummy’s body,’ says Pandora. ‘Goodness only knows what he did with it before he called the police.’

‘What do you mean? What d’you think he did?’ asks Lavinia, gawping.

The twins say no more, there’s no need to, their audience is horrifically impressed. They merely look at each other meaningfully.

Does Honesty shiver? Does she have the sensation that somebody somewhere is talking about her, walking over her grave?

Oh my, look at the company in which poor Honesty now finds herself.

She is constantly required to babysit in one of the tall, cold houses in Alexandra Avenue while the mothers meet up to drink themselves under the table while mixing a cauldron of smouldering rage in the circle left by their long hairy legs and their scuffed old sandals.

She never gets paid in money, only in acorns, in exchange for which she can purchase a Shiatsu massage, a palm reading, a hand-painted sign for her home or a woven basket. The worst thing about it is that the wine her mother and her friends down like water, and the Indian they send out for at about eleven o’clock each night are funded out of Honesty’s allowance.

Honesty goes round behind Ffiona turning all the lights off.

They think they have discovered freedom, these women who have broken all ties with men, they don’t see that poverty together with political correctness have them under their own strict codes of rules and repressions.

In the lavatory hangs a yellowing sign—‘HOPELESS TO ASK YOU TO AIM WITH CARE, BUT PLEASE REFRAIN FROM SCRATCHING YOUR PUBIC HAIRS WHILE PISSING.’

‘But you don’t have any men here, Mummy, so who’s going to read that?’

‘Some of the women bring their sons.’

‘Little boys? Little boys don’t have pubic hair.’

‘Darling, don’t be so pedantic. They will have some day.’

Everything in this baggy sitting-room is covered by throws—even the women sitting in it seem to have some piece of material made from natural fibres flung over them in order to disguise the scars within. Everything here, including the inhabitants, has known better days. Honesty is forced to sleep on a futon, no different to sleeping on a concrete floor, and how she misses the comforts of her life at Cadogan Square, just as Daddy said she would. Beans and lentils. Nut roasts and pasta bakes. Yet Honesty is making a statement, so can’t possibly go back yet. She gets the awful feeling, sometimes, that Daddy probably doesn’t even miss her. The funny thing is the pleasure her mother would feel if she knew of Honesty’s secret life, more realistic, more earthy, more darkly moon-orientated than Ffiona could possibly imagine.

Or would she?

There is a strong possibility that Ffiona, working so hard at creating her alternative act, would bleed within if she knew of her daughter’s steep descent into what was strictly Helena’s domain.

Not that Honesty believes in any of Callister’s strange manifestations, it is his body and the depth of his soul which captivate, bewitch and enchant her, for he is the gypsy in everyone’s heart. She has become his prisoner and must remain so until he chooses to free her. There had been a brief reluctance, once, a vague resentment, a passing desire to secure her freedom, before she yielded to him completely, for he had evoked, like a wicked magician waving a magic wand, a carnality so intense and luxurious that all sense of time and motion disappeared and when they make love there is only a welter of vivid, fantastic sensation. From the very beginning Callister liberated a passion he could never satisfy and Honesty envisions herself desiring him forever with this same obsessive torment. Hell. If Daddy ever found out about her base relationship with Callister his heart would fail him, brooding over her sins, haunted by thoughts of how she had fallen from her strict upbringing, thinking she had inherited her mother’s genetic defects, her most dastardly urges.

Whenever she gets the chance, whenever she knows that Fabian and Angela are in London, Honesty slips down to Devon to visit her grandparents. Evelyn and Elfrida, while pleased by her obvious strong attachment to them, have always found it difficult to see why Honesty finds their company so pleasing when really, a young girl like that ought to be spending her weekends socialising with her friends, and not just the female friends with whom she seems to surround herself.

‘I think she comes for the horses, midear, more than you and me,’ says Elfrida, breaking into another test match. ‘The first thing she does is make for the stables to take Conker out for a good old gallop.’

‘Some women are made like that,’ says Evelyn vaguely.

What can he mean?
‘Like what?’ Elfrida is on the last patch of her rug, but it’s hard to make out the sea spray from the wilder bits of the unicorn’s mane.

‘Prefer the company of animals. You know.’

Elfrida pauses to think about this, screwing up her bulging blue eyes. ‘But Honesty doesn’t look the type…’

‘What type?’

‘Oh, go back to your cricket, Evelyn.’

Naturally Honesty avoids the weekends when Angela and Fabian are down here. Elfrida hasn’t the patience to deal with her granddaughter’s obstinate reaction to her father’s third marriage. ‘Walking out like that, moving in with your mother, you’ll only regret this stupid behaviour, Honesty, you know you will. You will have to come to terms with them one day, why not now?’

Honesty is so intransigent about the whole subject.
‘But you can’t actually like her, Grandma. You can’t honestly believe that Angela Harper married Daddy for love.’

‘What are you implying, Honesty? That your poor father is unlovable? For goodness’ sake! And that young lady has money of her own, in any case. She works hard for it, Honesty. She has a career which she thoroughly enjoys.’

‘But you used to warn Daddy to watch out for women with designs, Grandma. You warned him over and over again. Why have you changed your tune?’

‘Because Angela is not that sort of girl,’ says Elfrida. ‘She is natural and unassuming and like a breath of fresh air around here, quite frankly.’

And Honesty eats like a horse when she comes down to Hurleston as if she’s been starved all week. But she’s no need to eat at Ffiona’s wretched trestle table, she could always go out for meals, it seems as if Honesty is punishing herself just like Ffiona. But Fabian isn’t slightly affected by any of their strange, self-mutilating behaviour. Elfrida’s son is happier, in fact, than at any time in his life before. To see him and Angela together is a refreshing experience. He seems young again, and full of beans, whereas lately he had seemed so tired. No, it is high time Ffiona and Honesty stopped being reproachful, opened their eyes to the facts of life and jolly well got on with it.

To Fabian’s amusement Angela is cagey about the home she has chosen for Aunty Val. Probably believes he will want to interfere in some way, definitely she feels uneasy at being in his debt although he can’t do more to reassure her on this score.

Fabian has to smile. She is so ridiculously touchy about all this.

‘I absolutely insist that the easiest way to do this is for me to pay the fees directly into your bank,’ he says, ‘and no, certainly not, I won’t hear about any complicated trust—just throwing money at the lawyers which we don’t need to do. I wish you would understand, Angela, that to pay for some comfort for your only relative in her declining years will actually give me a great deal of pleasure, whether she knows about it or whether she doesn’t is quite beside the point.’

‘But it seems so horribly expensive,’ says Angela, ‘I never dreamed the fees would come anywhere near a thousand pounds a week.’

‘Did she approve of the place is more to the point?’

Angela gives a great sigh of relief. ‘She was quite difficult at first. Just to get her out of the house was a struggle. But we arrived at tea-time and Mrs Mackie was so sweet and so charming, put Aunty Val at such ease, that before I had time to start on any gentle persuasion Aunty Val was asking when she could come back for another visit. We sat in the conservatory and ate cucumber and cress sandwiches and a cream horn each and it was a fellow resident who struck up a conversation with Aunty Val… started telling her all about the place. Completely ignored Aunty Val’s most menacing scowls.’ Angela looks up, smiling at Fabian, ‘So that was that. If we can manage it she goes next Thursday.’

‘I’m sure we can manage it,’ says Fabian, justly proud of the way he has engineered the whole awkward enterprise. All he will have to look at now are the tax implications. Having Aunty Val safely looked after will make such a difference to Angela’s peace of mind. ‘Shall we arrange a car?’

‘I can do that,’ says Angela quickly, and Fabian is careful not to push it.

Having Honesty out of the house is, quite frankly, a blessed relief. It provides himself and Angela with a far more congenial atmosphere for the first few weeks of their marriage, although, half that time, she was away in New York and he was unable to contact her. He missed her terribly. Fabian is also quite happy with the knowledge that Honesty picks her times for staying at Hurleston so as not to coincide with their own visits. The only worry he has is over the real possibility that Honesty will be adversely affected by the spitefulness of Ffiona. It doesn’t seem as if that woman could make matters worse, but oh yes she can, she can. He knows Ffiona by now, he knows the real extent of her bitterness.

There was a time when his cars were splashed with scarlet paint; anonymous letters full of shocking accusations were sent to the press; Helena received a dead rabbit’s head in the post; weedkiller was poured over the Ormerod private cemetery.

Ffiona, having laid her hands on Fabian’s diary, would turn up and cause embarrassing scenes at restaurants all over London. She barged her way into the exclusive Cody/Ormerod executive Christmas dinner and proceeded to strip at so fast a rate they hardly managed to get her out before she was quite indecent, and all the while her legal representatives went on demanding half his inheritance. In Ffiona’s eyes he was a bottomless pit.

There was a point when Fabian investigated the possibility of getting his wife committed, but he eventually settled for taking out an injunction against her.

Ffiona did not want a divorce, oh no, quite the reverse. She screamed and pleaded when she realised that divorce was Fabian’s definite intention. She made such a fuss—promises, promises, if he gave her just one more chance everything was going to be different—but against all the evidence she was helpless. Originally Fabian would have been perfectly happy to wait the necessary two years and go for a simple breakdown of marriage but Ffiona’s greed and her wicked scheming forced his hand. He had to expose her for the evil woman she was even though that meant damning her name and her reputation in public, even though it also meant a smattering of cunning and deviousness to get her in the right place at the right time. He sees her huddled figure now, coming up from those basement steps, cowering under the onslaught of revelation. Hah. Despite this, Ffiona was offered more than enough to keep her in comfort for the rest of her life. And then, of course, he met Helena and a quick settlement became imperative.

From the sublime to the ridiculous.

From the frying pan into the fire.

Women!

The six-year-old Honesty had behaved badly then, under Ffiona’s influence, and now, bored women together, there is nothing to suggest they won’t join forces. Fabian does not believe for one moment that Ffiona’s campaign for revenge is over, it is merely that her resources are limited, she cannot make the kind of waves that she used to. But with Honesty’s money behind her…?

Fabian is determined to do everything in his power to protect his marriage with Angela. Of course, the twins are safely away at The Rudge for the majority of the year so that solves that little problem. Those two can be very difficult but Fabian hopes that they will form a good relationship with Angela eventually. They need a mother but Elfrida, whom they both adore, is far too old to provide the sort of care they demand. And then again there is a good chance that Angela will give him a child,
a child he might actually like
… a boy… an heir to delight his heart. Overriding Giles’ interest, the son of his cousin, rather a disturbed young man according to reports, still travelling the world at twenty-five years old, quite time he worked all that out of his system.

‘What?’ cries Angela, mortified. ‘Honesty’s gone because of me, is that what you’re telling me? So why didn’t you tell me before? This is awful! Awful! And I didn’t even notice she was missing!’

‘I didn’t tell you because I knew this would be your reaction,’ says Fabian calmly. ‘Now Angela, this is not nearly as bad as you think. Honesty has gone to stay with her mother for a little while. She still visits my parents regularly at Hurleston, and she’ll soon be back if I know Honesty. This is merely a little protest at what she considers to be disloyal behaviour by her father.’

‘Disloyal?’

Fabian shrugs. ‘I know it sounds odd. She always was a possessive child, in terms of emotion as well as financially. She’ll be back. She won’t be able to bear life at Alexandra Avenue.’