Beggar Bride (18 page)

Ah yes, that was it. A scandal, Ffiona’s listeners are greedily gulping everything down. Wasn’t Ffiona caught coming out of some hideous basement glory-hole, some devious dive with a reputation for sado-masochism? And didn’t she swear she had been set up, exposed by her enemies and wasn’t her awful story dragged through the courts at the time? Bad enough for a man to behave in that way, let alone a woman. Her shocking behaviour, revealed to all and sundry, adversely affected her alimony, so much so that she’d spent a fortune trying for a second hearing, almost bankrupting herself, so the neighbours say, what with that and her frantic spending.

Her little daughter, aged six, was torn from the very arms of her mother.

And Helena’s death?

Ffiona isn’t slow to come forward. ‘There was so much gossip when Helena died it is hard to remember which was truth and which was fantasy,’ she comments, and yes, of course they can quote her on that. ‘Fabian’s becoming another Henry the Eighth, when he is fed up with his wives, when they fail to give him an heir he just dumps them. But at least I managed to live,’ and she looks pointedly at the small, littered garden, ‘if you can call this sort of existence living.’

‘But Ffiona, luvvie, the man has only lost two wives, hardly the six…’

‘I don’t care. It’s the principle that counts. You just wait and see,’ says Ffiona intriguingly. ‘You might just want to come back and talk to me again when this marriage comes to grief.’

‘Jesus, she’s bitter,’ says one reporter to the other. ‘We can’t write that. We’d be laid wide open…’

‘I think that was Ffiona’s trouble,’ mutters his companion coarsely. ‘She was laid wide open once too often.’

And Ffiona isn’t the only one to see herself in print.

There’s another ‘inside informant’, closer to home, and Fabian suspects Murphy O’Connell, a man who’d sell his own grandmother for fifty quid. ‘Mean?’ goes the quote. ‘Mean? He is meaner than the Windsors. His staff work all hours for peanuts, at the wedding they were even expected to put their own hands in their pockets to hire their suits because of that old miser. And he might be just about the richest man in Britain but his children are kept to a pound a week, less than folks who struggle on social security, they manage to give their kiddies more than that skinflint. And you ask me why that man’s wealthy, hell, he’d grudge every penny given to a beggar. It was certainly convenient for the Ormerod family that Helena died when she did, so there wasn’t another costly divorce to fight.’

It is all terribly unfair and quite untrue.

Fabian immediately instructs Juliet Worthington to release to the press just how much money Cody/Ormerod donate annually to various charitable causes.

But shit sticks.

Fabian is used to this sort of thing, it irritates him, of course, but it no longer hurts him. He is just very relieved that his new wife is out of the country. By the time she returns they’ll be pulling somebody else to pieces. And at last the focus has moved onto him and off the innocent Angela.

And maybe Ffiona will feel better after her little airing.

Doesn’t she realise what an appalling image she creates of herself every time she vents her spleen in this way? She calls Fabian’s private investigators ‘enemies’ as if they were acting out of personal spite and not taking part in a perfectly above-board business arrangement.

And it was only necessary to take these steps when Fabian’s legal representative, his Winchester friend, Jerry Boothroyd, heard how much she was trying to take him for. A staggering amount! Half the family fortune! When she’d been behaving like a bitch on heat, humping and grinding with half the workers on the estate let alone what she got up to with her seedy London cronies.

After his experiences with Ffiona, Fabian was certainly much more cautious about any monetary arrangements he might make.

But not cautious enough.

Helena, also, called him mean.

But she wasn’t interested in spending all her money on her passions and her men, like Ffiona. No, but horribly bogus all the same, that woman wormed her way into his affections and once that ring was on her finger she was scheming, funding various specious movements, hopelessly investing in these new green companies, she even paid for and set up a commune in the Hebrides until the islanders kicked up such a fuss they had them moved off.

She bought a stretch of land in Wales and invited all and sundry to come and live on it in home-made benders woven from new and vulnerable saplings. Ruined the land, of course. Chopped down the trees for firewood. Everything they grew was organic, they failed to put anything back in the soil except for their own filthy manure and oil from their frequent sump-changes. The planners soon put paid to that on health grounds, but no sooner was Fabian’s back turned than she sponsored a fantastically expensive pop concert-cum-riot, a three-day event which caused so much trouble in the surrounding area that the compensation claim which was finally laid at Fabian’s door was outrageous.

Time and time again he found himself and his horse pulled up by a group of Helena’s hairy hunt saboteurs, often, to his embarrassment, it was Helena herself and once she’d had the gall to throw herself down in front of his horse.

She could have caused his favourite hunter irreparable damage.

The press had had a field day over that as you can well imagine, and everything looked even more sordid in cold print.

So, although he finds it slightly irritating, Fabian admires Angela’s ferociously defended independence. ‘But I must know where you are staying in New York,’ he told her, ‘in case I need to contact you. And who knows, I might surprise you and join you one evening.’

‘Listen, that is exactly what I don’t want,’ Angela said. ‘This is my work, and I have made it successful against all the odds. It’s a hard world to break into, Fabian, and I don’t want the sort of diversions I have seen other women having to cope with, women who, in the end, have had to bow down to husband and family and give everything up.’

She would not even allow Fabian’s secretary, Ruth Hubbard, to organise her tickets or help with the travelling arrangements.

Fabian insisted. ‘But surely a phone number…’

‘I don’t always know where I am going to be, and I don’t want the responsibility of having always to let you know from one day to the next. Don’t you see, it would cramp my style! I haven’t got layers of assistants to protect me from interference, like you have. I have to get myself from place to place and it’s as much as I can cope with without worrying about you. Don’t you understand?’

Fabian laughed fondly with her.

Angela had been equally stubborn about Aunty Val. ‘I don’t want your support for my family, Fabian.’

‘Look, Angela, paying for poor Aunty Val has a selfish motive behind it. I don’t want you worrying day and night about that old lady left all alone in that great Hampstead house.’

‘She would never forgive me if I sold it over her head.’

‘I’m not suggesting you sell it for one moment. Keep the house, if that is what you want. But do let me pay the residential expenses.’

She said she’d think about this, and that maybe, just maybe, she would put the proposal to Aunty Val on her return from the States.

So Fabian could do no more. He had to leave it there. Angela is so hysterically fond of that woman, and protective of her. But he supposes that is natural, their relationship must have been very intense, just the two of them in that house, and Angela growing up with only her aunt to care for her.

Fabian still basks in the happy afterglow of his marriage, dazzled by Angela’s beauty.

He has not known Angela long but already he misses her, coming home to a house that seems strangely dreary now whereas, before, he had never considered it so. Honesty still goes round silent and sulking, creeping about like a dying fly in spite of the encouraging talks he has had with her.

‘You are quite clearly not happy here any longer, darling. Would you like me to buy you a flat in London, somewhere in Knightsbridge, somewhere you can share with your friends and live a more independent life? As I’ve said before, I’d be quite happy to do so.’ If only the girl would take a leaf out of Angela’s book.

‘Turn me out again, is that it, Daddy? Like you did when I was six years old and became a nuisance to you and Helena.’

Fabian regarded his daughter levelly, long overtired of the struggle to please this obstinate child. Vexed, he well remembers the trauma they’d had at the time. She may have been six, and beautifully behaved up until then, but when Helena arrived the child appeared to know every trick in the book. She refused all food Estelle offered her, she pretended to sleepwalk at night, she poured water onto Helena’s side of the bed, she was offhand with her. She could have gone to stay with her mother but Ffiona was always gallivanting off abroad at that time so any arrangements in that direction proved difficult. The only answer had been boarding school.

‘I’m not bothering to reply to that, Honesty. You are nearly twenty years old. I am just not having Angela upset by your bad temper and this childish refusal to accept her.’

‘What are you going to do, Daddy? Throw me out then?’ Honesty planted her feet where she stood by his chair so she looked immovable and solid.

‘Darling, of course I am not going to throw you out. You are welcome to stay here, naturally. But only if you take that look off your face and begin to behave in a civilised manner. So far you haven’t made the smallest effort to be nice.’

There were tears in her wide blue eyes. ‘I have helped you, Daddy, tried to be a companion to you, acted as hostess lots of times, tried to be the kind of loyal and dutiful daughter I thought you wanted and now you just push me aside and treat me as if I am nothing again.’

Fabian was wrong, he knew he was wrong, but he couldn’t contain his indignation. She has this unfortunate trait of fawning, just like her mother did when she couldn’t get her own way. ‘Perhaps you have tried too hard, Honesty. Perhaps, for your own sake, it’s time you learned to be yourself. Going away might make this easier.’

Now Honesty did cry, noisily and wetly, and Fabian loathes tears. ‘She’s got to you already, Daddy. She’s turned you against me already and after all this I’ll never, never forgive her!’

Now he longed to strangle her. ‘Honesty,’ Fabian tried, ‘listening to you anyone’d think you’d had a hard and cruel life. Angela has not said a word about you, about any member of my family! She likes you all as far as I know, and she’s certainly not the type of person…’

‘How do you know that, Daddy?
You’ve only just met her!’

It was no good trying to convince Honesty. All his arguments fell on stony ground. He wished she would leave and let him get on with his busy life, he hasn’t the time for personal trauma, but nevertheless he is shocked when his disagreeable child tells him where she is going.

‘I’m going to live with Mummy,’ says Honesty the following morning, with one, pathetic suitcase gripped tightly in her hand as if she is running away from home and wants to be prevented.

‘Ffiona? After the things she told the newspapers?’

‘Mummy invited me so I’m going.’

‘But darling, in that terrible house? And the way Mummy lives now with all those women in comfortable shoes.’ Fabian knows that dyke is no longer an acceptable expression.

‘Mummy has found herself,’ says Honesty. ‘And that’s what you told me to do so I’m going.’

Fabian smiles, thinking of Honesty’s love of material things, her easy, comfortable life at home. ‘Darling, I doubt you’ll last very long…’

‘Oh. So that’s it. You will cut my allowance.’ It almost sounds as if she wants him to.

‘Of course not. That would never enter my mind. What’s got into you, Honesty?’

‘Mummy loves me. She wants me to be with her. She says she’s never really had a chance to get to know me.’

And whose fault is that? Not Fabian’s. Honesty is being very silly. What is Ffiona cooking up now? No doubt she will find Honesty’s monthly account a useful addition to her household income, but it won’t take Honesty long to rebel against this.

It is on the tip of Fabian’s tongue to say he hopes she’ll be happy there. But before he can upset her further Honesty turns on her heel and leaves. ‘I’ll send for my things later.’

‘A
NOB LIKE THAT,
with his contacts, he could easily find out about you if he wanted.’

Billy, as usual, sees rocks ahead, he’s never heard of navigation. He airs his negative thoughts as together he and Ange read the
Daily Mail
report of the wedding which includes some choice remarks of Ffiona’s. Unfortunately there’s a picture, a good one, ‘but Sandra Biddle is the only person who even knows I have changed my name to Harper, and she’d hardly be likely to read the society columns in the
Mail,
I would think the
Guardian
is more her style, all social workers read the
Guardian.’

‘Sandra Biddle wouldn’t recognise you in this.’ At last Billy has something positive to say, although you wouldn’t think it, to hear his gloomy tone of voice. ‘I suppose those nips might recognise the dress but you don’t look anything like the Angela Harper she’s ever seen. I mean, you look sodding radiant, as if you’re in love with the tool.’

Ange had not informed the Coburns about her marriage. She has not been in contact with them since she left their mock Tudor four-bedroomed home—Terry and June—for her bedsit in West Hampstead three years ago. They waved her off looking relieved. Eileen Coburn wiped her hands together, ridding herself of something sticky before she attempted a feeble wave. She mouthed ‘good luck’ through her shiny lipstick.

‘They say more about him than you anyway,’ says Billy, awed to see Ange’s picture in a national newspaper and fascinated with his first sight of Sir Fabian Ormerod. ‘He’s the one that’s important. What a jerk. Does he always wear that silly smirk on his face? Or is that a twitch?’

‘He always wears it. I think it’s a kind of defence.’

‘Against what?’

‘Flashing cameras, I would imagine,’ says Ange, reading the article. ‘He hasn’t actually confided in me. Christ that woman’s got a grudge. Look at her! What a slag.’