Beggar Bride (17 page)

Still all clear.

Jesus Christ. By now she was close to fainting with fear.

Dare she?

Some dare-devil instinct drove her on. In for a penny… She plunged into the next-door room and that even larger pile of linen was out in the corridor in the blink of an eye. Ange dragged both these enormously heavy loads full of clothes—the strength came from somewhere, she’d never know where, she didn’t believe in God—and dumped them in the blue trolley labelled A5 which waited beside the service lift.

Slowly. Casually. Then she carried on up the back stairs with which she was so familiar, gasped at the sight of the same routine, the morning chaos of mothers and children who didn’t see each other let alone a stranger, hurried to her room and waited.

Their old room was airless and desolate, its radiator throbbing with heat although it was April. It seemed as frightened as she was as she saw herself in the seedy mirror, startled eyes, gaping mouth, chest heaving.

She must calm down. She must.

But what if she’d been caught on some hidden camera?

No, no, they wouldn’t have cameras here. The guests would find out and object.

The room was exactly the same, but why should she find this surprising? The same stale smell from the bed. The windows were stained with pigeon shit. Abandon all hope, which Billy had scratched with a match into the flaky plaster, was still there, over the rickety bed-head.

At twelve o’clock precisely, Ange got up, straightened her hair and her features, drew in a deep breath and made for the service lift. Down in the bowels of the Prince Regent its guts spew over several miles of twisted underground passageways, brilliantly lit. It made an excellent underground shelter for visiting bigwigs during the war. The kitchens are still situated here and it was down here, in the washroom with the two industrial machines, that the top-floor residents had to come to deal with their personal laundry.

But the main bulk of the hotel laundry goes by lorry to Staines.

Down in the echoing loading bay, the size of an aircraft hangar and stinking of lorry exhaust fumes, the pace is always hectic. Here the trolleys sit and wait for the pick-up in neat, orderly stacks.

A girl, also wearing a white overall, eyed Ange oddly as she scrabbled about searching for the blue trolley with the A5 label.

‘I’m looking for an earring,’ lied Ange, over the roar of fumes and sound.

The girl sniffed. ‘Rather you than me. You don’t know what’s on those sheets.’

‘Oh, I do,’ called Ange, ‘but I’ve got no bloody choice have I?’

‘Well, good on you…’ The girl wandered off, leaving Ange to carve a route through the seemingly thousands of waiting trolleys.

She found what she wanted. Her two precious bundles were underneath. She had to heave a dozen other, smaller bundles, off the top before she reached them. She dug them out, repacked the trolley…

She glanced at her watch.

Where is he? Oh God, where is he?
Don’t let me down now, Billy, for Christ’s sake.

His familiar voice was like a balm. ‘Two bags for Victoria.’

He looked very small, he sounded small so she could hardly hear him, but Billy had seen her and was making his way towards her pushing a luggage trolley sporting a metal flag which said
Victoria Station.

Not bothering with a greeting, far too frazzled for that, together they adhered to the plan and lugged the two bundles onto the luggage trolley and made for the exit.

This was always going to be the most hazardous part.

‘Did you say Victoria, mate?’ asked one of the loading clerks, Bic behind his ear.

‘Two bags,’ puffed Billy, sweating.

‘That’s not bags. That’s laundry.’

Ange came up behind. ‘It’s not. It’s curtains for cleaning,’ she said, with disinterest. ‘Old mother Bottomley sent them down.’

The flustered clerk checked his dockets. ‘I haven’t got anything here, I know nothing about this.’

‘Please yourself then, mate,’ said Billy, pretending to wander off. ‘I just do as I’m told.’

‘It’s curtains,’ said Ange, again. ‘You can see, they’re bigger than the laundry ones.’ She hoped like hell all this would be worth it. She’d have to cross her legs soon, she was going to wet herself in a minute.

‘Well who’s going to sign?’ asked the clerk, trying to deal with a delivery of frozen fish at the same time.

‘I’ll bloody sign,’ said Billy, ‘if it’ll make you any happier.’

Billy signed and the man turned to concentrate on more important business. And so it was in this way, like two ants carrying a couple of sugar lumps, that Ange and Billy pushed the station luggage trolley all the way to Willington Gardens, the worst part by far being dragging them up the stairs to the flat.

Coach, carriage, wheelbarrow, muckcart.
No one batted an eyelid.

When they had finally finished, Billy pushed the trolley out onto the street again, and hid it among some handy restaurant dustbins.

It has been worthwhile, exceptionally so. The wedding is over and Ange thanks her lucky stars once again as she carefully hangs her new clothes and puts them in the wardrobes at Cadogan Square. One chest of drawers is already full—well—if you spread everything out as extravagantly as you can.

That dreadful Murphy O’Connell had come out to help her when she drew up with her booty in eight heavy-duty dustbin bags.

‘No cases then, Your Ladyship?’ His mean little eyes looked at her sharply.

‘I find black bags far easier,’ said Ange, ‘cases do take up so much unnecessary space.’

‘You’ll not find space a problem here, milady,’ said Murphy, that sinister little dwarf of a man, and she felt the emphasis on that last word was unnecessarily challenging.

But no, she mustn’t become paranoid, it is just O’Connell’s muttering accent that makes him sound so insolent. His wife, Estelle, is the most friendly, charming person, she makes up for her husband, her effervescence and her largeness help to blot him out.

There are little white bags of pot-pourri in every drawer, and even the lining paper has a scented fragrance.

The Japanese family have done Ange proud. During their stay in London all three women were extremely busy. They were avid but selective shoppers. Neither she nor Billy could believe it when they pulled out the dress. ‘It’s a fucking wedding dress,’ he’d said, drawing hard on his fag in excitement. She’d had to keep him away from the bundles, he was likely to step on the fabric, or mark it, she made him watch while she laid everything out, one by one, on the back of the Ercol sofa.

‘It certainly could be a wedding dress…’

‘It is a frigging wedding dress.
Look at the roses round the hem. You wouldn’t have roses round the hem if you didn’t want to get married in it.’

‘It could be just a very smart dress which happens to be in ivory.’ In fact the dress was a specially designed and terribly expensive item for a Japanese fancy-dress ball one of the girls was due to attend on her return back home. She was going as an English summer. But Ange loved the princess line which made her look like Little Miss Muffet, and the neat kid boots which matched it.

‘What about the hat then? Would you dare wear that?’

The hat is an incredible thing, a huge circle of flowers on the carpet, and then, when you pull it, the whole thing rises like a 3-D birthday card, turning into the most enchanting summery bonnet with ribbons which tie under the chin. ‘Dare wear it? I’d have chosen it myself. I love it. You couldn’t not love it.’ Ange had dragged it on and gone to look at herself in the mirror. She took her head up and down and sideways, grinning with pleasure, preening as she did so. ‘I bet you one of those Japanese girls was planning on getting married!’

Ange paused, racked with a guilt she didn’t expect. Something heavy pulled inside her. To come back to the hotel and discover all these marvellous purchases gone. It would break anyone’s heart.

‘We can’t keep all these things, we’ll have to take them back!’ She felt as mad as she sounded and Billy agreed.

‘You’re insane!’ Billy, stunned and puce in the face, said they’d be bound to be insured. ‘People like that. Sod it, they’ll enjoy going round again, give the buggers something to do.’

‘But they might not. They might not even be rich. They might have saved up all their lives for this one special blowout.’ Close to tears, Ange was insistent. ‘It’s like, if we’re too greedy, we’ll bring down bad luck,’ she said. ‘It was too easy to fleece them, Billy, can’t you understand what I mean?’

Billy sweated. ‘After going through all that crap…’

‘We don’t need all this.’

‘Oh? So you’re planning to keep some of it, but not all, is that it? And don’t you think that’s worse?’

‘No.’ Ange was all jumpy, tempting fate. This feeling was hard to define, but if you used all the luck, it was gone, there might not be any more, she couldn’t bear the thought of those girls’ pretty faces getting back to that empty room, oh, how they would detest her.

‘Well you’ll have to sodding do it yourself,’ Billy sulked, stamping round, shaking his head. ‘You can’t go back to the bloody hotel and hope not to be seen this time! Why must you be so sodding childish? What’s it to do with, God or something?’

‘I’ll not go back, I’ll wheel most of this stuff and leave it outside the cop shop, they’re bound to go to the pigs when they find all this lot missing.’

Billy was speechless, but eventually, calling her all the names he knew, he retrieved the trolley and helped her carry a whole sheetful down the blasted steps and out into the yard again.

There was more than enough… and the dress itself!

All Ange had to do on the day was buy a basket of flowers and carry it on her arm.

Even with half of it handed back there were silk leggings and T-shirts, linen jackets, leather boots and a pair of flat gold shoes which were special, most still in their tissue paper and carrier bags with labels on. There were nightclothes, a couple of brand-new handbags, six dresses, four summery and casual and two more exclusive ones for evening wear. With all this stuff, and the few bits she had already accumulated, this was certainly the basis of a wardrobe any young woman of style would be proud of.

Silk, satin…

She’ll go through the jewellery later when she has more time.

Lady Angela Ormerod.

Jeez…

Thankful to be alone at last after such an exhausting day—the luncheon reception at Brown’s didn’t finish until five o’clock—Ange is missing Jacob already. She’ll be three nights away from him this time, she warned Fabian that she’d be leaving for New York on Tuesday, she’d probably be there for at least a week, and he accepted this quite happily. But something is going to have to be done about the financial situation, and soon.

Aunty Val is going to have to be persuaded to accept her place at the residential home and Ange is going to have to pretend to go and view some suitable contenders.

But won’t Fabian want to know which home they choose?

Won’t he be tempted, some time in the future, to ring and enquire about a Miss Valerie Harper, just to make sure his generosity is being put to good use? The whole enterprise is fraught with pitfalls, but Ange will have to convince him that it is best, for her aunt’s protection, that he does not know where she is—the matron could let the cat out of the bag by informing Aunty Val some man had been making enquiries—after all, Aunty Val doesn’t know any men and such information could cause her great distress.

Will Fabian accept such flimsy excuses for being kept in the dark?

Can Ange persuade him to pay the fees directly into her new account rather than to the home, lest Aunty Val should find out?

She’ll be able to describe it all right, that won’t be a problem. Billy always turns on to watch
Waiting For God.
Oh how she misses him. How she misses them both.

T
O THE MANOR BORN?

It is a blessing that Ange is in New York because poor Juliet Worthington at the Cody/Ormerod PR department is deluged by feature writers, magazine editors and, God forbid, certain notorious hacks from the popular press, all demanding more information about the new Lady Ormerod.

‘Please, Sir Fabian, surely there must be something more you can give us? If we don’t tell these wretched people they’ll make up their own scenarios, we’ve seen it all before and there’s not a lot anyone can do about it.’

‘I have told you all I know, Juliet,’ says Fabian. ‘Angela is a private person, very young, no past I’m afraid, no family anyone would have heard of, and she is not, and never will be, available.’

‘So I’ll have to tell the man from
Hello
…?

‘Yes,’ said Fabian firmly, ‘I’m afraid you will.’

‘He is most insistent.’

‘And so am I.’

Having failed at the horse’s mouth certain disappointed reporters dig up Sir Fabian’s other living wife, Ffiona, in her house at St John’s Wood. Wasn’t there some scandal about her at one time…?

‘Frankly, I feel sorry for the woman,’ says Ffiona, posing for the cameras on her front step in an overwashed jumper full of holes and baggy, outdated Aladdin pants having come late to feminism. She smokes cigarette after cigarette quickly and nervously, accepting her lights from the reporters. There is a distinctly noticeable current of anger running through her remarks. ‘Knowing what I know.’

‘What does that mean, darling?’

‘This way, Ffiona!’

‘Give us a smile, dear, that’s lovely.’

You only have to compare Ffiona to her carefully groomed daughter, Honesty, to know how far she has gone to seed. Her nails, not long any more, are still painted but chipped and badly bitten. Her hair, once shiny and blonde and lovely, is now cut short to her head, tufted, and dyed platinum. Her eyebrows, once so delicately arched, now grow where they will, and meet across her button nose. ‘Marrying Fabian is beginning to get like finding the tomb of Tutankhamun. There’s a curse…’

The reporters scribble madly on. This is what they like to hear on a silly Sunday afternoon.

She taps her cigarette with a nervous violence against the railing. ‘I mean, look what happened to poor Helena and of course, everyone knows that my reputation was ruined.’