Beggar Bride (22 page)

And Tina doesn’t ask questions—like when she ordered that lingerie set for Ange, and that was good of her—she doesn’t go poking her nose in where it’s not wanted. ‘I just told her you were away on a course,’ said Billy, ‘for a few days every week, selling, and after that she didn’t seem interested to know any more. Well, she’s more concerned with talking about herself, with all her troubles.’

It would be unkind to let Tina know she wasn’t wanted. She’s obviously lonely, stuck indoors with a demanding toddler, and nobody to talk to all day, not a friend in the world—just like poor Billy really. It’s natural that they have the odd cup of coffee together, let Petal come and play with Jacob sometimes, watch
Postman Pat
and
The Muppets,
share a couple of cans of lager. Billy says he’d go mad if he had no one to talk to and Tina badly needs company what with all her problems with Ed.

Having said that, there was really no need for Billy to go wading into the breach during one of Ed’s drunken visits. Tina isn’t his problem. She should have come to her senses long ago and thrown the bugger out.

Ange takes the brand-new chequebook from her patent leather handbag enjoying the click and squeak of luxury as she snaps her wallet closed. She knows she looks good, her black hair is held back with a fancy gold clip, her high cheekbones, with a touch of blusher, highlight soft, unblemished skin and her long eyelashes flutter with concentration. ‘Cash—five hundred pounds,’ she writes, and feels herself blushing, as if the money’s not hers to take, as if she expects some punitive hand to clamp itself down on her shoulder.

But the cashier smiles at her brightly and asks how she wants it.

Does she look as furtive as she feels? ‘What?’ asks Ange.

The smile goes brighter. ‘How would you like the money?’

‘Sorry?’ How do I want it? I want it here in my waiting hand.

‘In tens or twenties?’

‘Oh?’ How stupid can anyone be? She calms her thumping heart. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I was miles away. In twenties, please.’

It is understandable that Billy wants to go on a small spending spree today. After all, while Ange has been out and about, while her life has changed beyond belief, Billy’s has stayed as boringly the same as ever. And he’ll want some money to keep him going when she goes back at the end of this week. She’s supposed to be in Rome at the moment at some fashion fair. She bought the magazine, the
Drapers Record,
after she found a copy in the library and saw it was full of fashion information, the kind of thing a buyer might read. And it lists all sorts of meetings and shows and conventions, it gives Ange some useful ideas.

Oh no!

Surely not!

Her mind goes blank, her hands are sweating profusely when, through a fog of horror, she catches sight of Honesty with a drab, platinum blonde standing at the adjacent counter. That must be Ffiona!
Don’t worry, don’t panic, just turn round and walk away,
and as terror grips her she whispers to herself, don’t run,
don’t run,
as she hastily disappears. Gets out of the bank, quick as lightning. Seeing nothing.

Did Honesty see her?

No, no, she can’t have.

Why hasn’t Ange given more thought to the likelihood of a chance ill-meeting? Because it is just not damn well possible to think of everything,
that’s why.

By the time she catches up with Billy, Ange feels resentful and angry. She snaps at him, ‘That was a bloody close shave. We could have lost everything,’ as if it is all his fault. She thrusts the money into his hand with a poor grace. She notices his cheap, baggy jeans, his off-white T-shirt, he hasn’t bothered to shave this morning and he looks like a slob. The results of daily despair and inertia, well, whose fault is that? ‘You better get on and spend it then, now you’ve got it.’

‘What the hell’s got into you?’

So Ange has to explain.

And then it’s round British Home Stores, Top Man and C & A buying cheap tat which Billy doesn’t need anyway, but he swears that he does. Random and senseless purchases. White trainers, pants, socks, T-shirts, and an anorak which cost fifty quid and still looks tatty.

In front of Dixons they pause while Billy goes in to see about the cost of a CD player.

‘That’s just the sort of thing we can do without,’ says Ange, pulling off a set of expensive headphones and dragging him out of the store. ‘This money isn’t for luxuries, Billy, and the moment we start throwing it around…’

‘I thought you said this was mine. For me!’ His face twists as if to try and stop from crying.

‘Well it is, but…’

‘Well then, if I want a CD player I’ll damn well get one.’ He turns on her, erupting in anger with his blue eyes blazing.

Oh, what the hell, what’s the point? He does need cheering up, that’s true, but so far this visit home, which she had such hopes for, has turned into a real bitch.

‘Do me a favour, Ange.’

‘Yes, Billy?’

‘Piss off.’

Perhaps this has to be just part of the price.

His voice is small. He won’t look at her. He resents her now, thinks Ange, holding back the tears. The Harper family walk home in silence but when the door closes behind them Billy takes her into his arms as you’d hold a long-lost child.

F
ABIAN IS ELATED.

It is entirely appropriate, and in keeping with Angela’s sweet and slightly secretive nature, that she waits until they are at Hurleston before announcing her portentous news. A slightly longer stay in Milan than expected made Fabian value her company all the more, and now they walk through the cool, uncut grass of the water meadow down towards the river, hand in hand, the calm waters disturbed only by the plop of a rising fish or a dipping heron.

Fabian takes her into his arms and kisses the sunwarm top of her head. She smells sweetly of apples. ‘It must have been…’ he starts, half smiling.

‘It must have been that night in London,’ says Ange, finishing for him, and if her memory serves her right she’d finished for him that time, too. She remembers the state of her aching wrist before he actually managed it. ‘You are obviously a very potent person.’

Fabian’s smile is a broad one now. Since that first night their love life has been unspectacular, which is how he likes it. He never fails to go to sleep with his arm round Angela, and when he feels like going further he kisses the back of her neck. She responds quite beautifully with little moans, eager to please him, knowing exactly how to touch him, she waits patiently on her back until he is ready to mount her. This is one way Fabian can be sure of a good night’s sleep, better even than Benylin. He always drops off immediately, aware of Angela lying contentedly, breathing softly beside him.

Exactly how it ought to be.

‘We must get you to Sir Clement Brownjohn at once.’

‘Isn’t he the one…’

‘Diana and Fergie and everyone else…’

‘I was going to say wasn’t he the Queen’s gynaecologist?’

‘I believe so,’ says Fabian.

‘Well isn’t he rather old?’

‘Experience like his is worth everything else,’ says Fabian firmly. ‘Childbirth is childbirth after all, it hasn’t changed you know.’ And he smiles at her fondly. ‘Are you quite certain?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘So when is the happy day?’

‘Some time in January, I think. It’s a bit hard to tell because I am always so irregular.’

Fabian does not want to hear about that. ‘What excellent news! Wait till Mother and Father know!’

‘And Aunty Val. And Honesty?’ Angela cautions. ‘And the twins?’

‘It might take them time, but in the end they will join in our rejoicing, you’ll see.’ He will damn well make sure they do. ‘And now, how about work?’

‘Oh I’ll be able to keep going for a little while yet,’ says Ange with the kind of gutsy spirit he so admires. Ffiona collapsed completely on hearing she was with child. Took to her bed and hardly left it, demanding all sorts of expensive treats like caviar and giant bars of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut. ‘Right up until the last minute, I hope.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘We’ll have to see about that.’

‘Of course, my feelings are that there’s no better way to bring up a child than with a nanny. In my own experience children who have nannies turn out to be far more rounded and confident.’

Yes. It was sometimes quite appalling to watch Helena cavorting about with her children, bosom wobbling, hair awry, underwear gaping, totally out of control, the lot of them; And they never behaved as Honesty did, who started off as the sweetest of children, with all the benefits of Ba-ba’s expert ministrations.

‘That seems like the best idea to me,’ says Angela, sounding like the best of the Ormerods. It is so pleasing the way they seem to agree on so many subjects close to Fabian’s heart. She is such a sensible girl.

‘Archie is a good Ormerod family name, my grandfather Percy’s father was named Archibald. What do you think about that?’

They are arm in arm now, staring into the water. ‘I like it.’ He can smell the faint mustiness of clover, and horse dung, and something else, he sniffs, tobacco? No no. It can’t be. Angela never smokes. She is very much against the habit, just as he is. Smoking is common and disgusting, Ffiona was a chain-smoker and Helena’s cigarettes always smelt like dung from a zoo.

Fabian is already certain that this child will be a boy. He will persuade Angela to have a scan because he can’t wait seven long months to know. What a difference a boy would make to his life… someone to hand everything on to, the firm, and even more important, Hurleston itself and everything in it. A brief picture comes to him of himself and Angela grey-haired in the Old Granary, pottering about as his own parents do, contented together, and all supportive, with dogs at their heels and jackets which smell of old gunpowder.

But hang on a minute, when Fabian is seventy Angela will only be forty-five. Already the hairs on his chest are turning grey.

‘The nursery wing will have to be opened and aired,’ says Lady Elfrida, thrilled by the news, ‘and someone will have to find a good nanny. So difficult to pick one at whim, these days you hear such dreadful stories, you can’t trust to placing an advertisement in
The Lady.
You get all sorts of unsuitable people, young girls showing their bottoms with nothing better to do. No, Fabian, midear, you will have to find somebody known to your friends. And have you phoned Sir Clement?’

‘Angela is going to see him next week, Mother.’

‘Splendid! Splendid! What d’you think of this, Evelyn, dear?’

‘Absolutely wizard news, worth a small toast, wouldn’t you say?’ And Evelyn goes back to his cricket.

There is nothing like the news of a baby for taking a person back to their own happy experiences of that time. As a girl Elfrida used to worry she was too big to give birth. After all, as she grew up it seemed she was too big to do anything properly and why shouldn’t birth be just something else she’d fail at because of her size. ‘What a terrible shame, for a girl,’ said her grandmother through her lorgnettes.
‘What size did you say those feet were, poor darling?’
And, ‘I’m not sure which horse we should choose for Elfrida, she is too young for a hunter and yet I don’t have a pony to carry her.’

A stocky, hairy girl, her size was Elfrida’s undoing all the way through childhood—no suitable clothes would fit her, no dance partner chose her and even as a baby she never used a high chair, they just propped her on a chair on cushions—until she met Evelyn of course, a small man who had a thing about big women. He called her handsome.

And both Fabian and his sister, Candida, were over nine pounds in weight at birth.

The Ormerods tend to bear large babies. Elfrida gives Angela a worried look.

And yet this is not always the way it goes. You would think someone as stringy as Maudie Doubleday—six foot at least and as thin as the needles she plies—would have given birth to a skeleton, but that was not the case. Poor Maudie. Her little tragedy is a secret Elfrida and Evelyn have always kept close. When she heard about the poor child’s baby, and the financial struggle her aunt went through, keeping the girl at her cottage in the village during the pregnancy, Elfrida suggested she come to work in the house, sewing and mending. It was the least she could do, in her own joy she was most sensitive to the pain of others.

It was awful. The children were born on the same day.

Maudie’s child was adopted of course, much the best course of action under the dreadful circumstances, but soon after that poor Maudie struck up a strong relationship with Martin the hall-boy who said he would have married her if only he’d known. But by then, of course, it was too late. The baby had gone and Maudie was reluctant to tie the knot.

Whatever happened to that poor little girl who was given away?

‘They will announce it in
The Times
of course,’ says Nanny Ba-ba, with pleasure. ‘And how about your gifted work with the pendulum, Maudie? You should offer to sex the child for them.’

‘I don’t do that any more,’ says Maudie firmly. ‘I could be accused of witchcraft if anything happened to the baby. Whereas warts are quite a different matter.’

Oh dear, hark at Maudie with her dark art.

It was always extraordinary to Nanny Ba-ba how close Helena and Maudie became during her unhappy reign, two such different people, almost as odd as the way Maudie had gradually adopted the role of soothsayer to cottager and gentry alike. That, of course, is what attracted the alternative Helena. Maudie ‘bought’ her wart and two days later it had quite disappeared. After that Helena, a bit of a fool where these things are concerned, seemed to believe that Maudie could perform miracles, and came to her for her home-made tonic wine, her country potions and lotions all made up from ancient recipes passed down through the ages by grateful women to her midwife aunt.

Maudie grinds with her pestle and mortar, brews malodorously with her long wooden spoon in the garden shed attached to the cottage, and even Nanny Ba-ba is barred from entry. Maudie keeps the door securely padlocked but why bother? Nanny isn’t remotely interested in going in there, nobody is, for goodness’ sake.