The White Marriage Read online

  Randy pulled open the worn wooden drawer that housed the cash.

  ‘Oh, Dio mio,’ he said, eyes closed, sighing heavily. ‘She’s only done me over again, the female dog!’

  Arietta stared at the empty drawer that had contained an admittedly comfortingly small amount of cash.

  ‘Miss Staunton,’ Randy stood her in front of him, straightening her shoulders as he did so, ‘if you ever, ever see that woman again, don’t go looking for anything or anyone except me. She is known as the Duchess of All Gone – and has the lightest fingers of anyone you’ll ever know. This must be about the tenth time she has cleaned me out. Oh, the annoyance of it all. Always beware the fact that she asks for books published in Venice. Last time it was D. H. Lawrence’s The Adventures of William, would you believe? The poor creature who was helping me at the time spent hours looking for it, only to find that not only had Her Grace cleaned out the cash drawer, dear, but she had also cleaned out the poor girl’s handbag. All her Christmas savings gone in a minute.’

  ‘Oh dear, I am sorry.’

  ‘And so you should be.’ Randy smiled. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll soon get used to these people.’ He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Now for your sins, you can take the white pepper pot we keep for the sandwiches, sniff hard, and then go and sneeze behind Silent Creeper.’

  When she returned to the desk Randy was all smiles.

  ‘What a good girl you are,’ he said affectionately. ‘Now see this?’ He held up a copy of a book that Arietta did not recognise. ‘You must take it to Lady Beatrice Bonnett, in Eccleston Street.’ He took a wrapper off another book, and folded it carefully over. ‘She will pay you for it as something quite other.’ He sighed. ‘This is what we are reduced to in this country, being treated like little smutty schoolchildren, not allowed to read the same things as people on the continent. What a silly business censorship is, but also how amusing it makes life. Smuggling is not a crime, it is a duty. Laces for my lady, brandy for the parson, a naughty book for teacher – dum, di, dum, di, dum, as the gentlemen ride by.’

  Arietta grabbed her favourite straw hat with the black velvet trimming, and shot out into the street with the freshly wrapped brown parcel.

  Randy watched her, smiling, holding his half-moon glasses at the ready, as he prepared to send out, for the fourth time, a bill to the millionaire Lord Cawston – who must imagine that everyone was as rich as he, or he would surely pay his account a little more readily. But before he folded the bill in two, and popped it in the envelope, Randy continued to smile at the disappearing sight of Arietta Staunton. She was what the Americans called ‘a gas’. Certainly she was a breath of fresh air at Beetle’s. All in all, not a bad place for a young country girl to grow up, really – always provided that he kept a firm avuncular eye on her.

  The telephone rang. It was Arietta’s mother. Randy pulled a face into the receiver. Mother wanted Arietta to go home to Rushington. Damn.

  He turned as the shop bell finished ringing out its lazy welcome.

  ‘Sam, Sam, pick up that tome for me, would you?’

  Sam looked disappointed. ‘How did you know it was me?’ he asked, unwrapping himself from the false spectacles and woollen scarf in which he had hoped to disguise himself as his uncle’s least popular customer.

  ‘Silent Creeper does not wear Trumper’s lime-based aftershave lotion, Sam. Nor does he smell strongly of garlic from a doubtless spanking spaghetti bolognese from the night before.’

  ‘Damn.’

  ‘Quite. Damn.’

  ‘Oh, my—’ Sam looked stricken. ‘That means I must have breathed garlic all over Arietta.’

  ‘And she has breathed garlic all over me this morning …’

  Randy smiled.

  ‘Happily I too partook of a spag bol last night, so we are duly all met. Ah. Now, time for you to vamoose to the stockroom. I have a bit of nifty negotiation to conduct, old boy. So off you go until this Americano gentleman goes.’

  Sam watched from behind the stockroom door. He knew that Uncle Randy conducted some fairly fascinating deals on behalf of customers, but none was more fascinating than those he delicately negotiated on behalf of the adult books readers.

  ‘I would like the sequel to this.’

  ‘In the usual wrapper?’

  ‘That will do nicely.’

  Randy ran his index finger down a small black leather book. ‘Let me see. Flowers of Eastern China, or The Herbaceous Border in Summer?’ Randy looked over his spectacles at the American gentleman in his immaculate mackintosh. ‘May I suggest the latter? I fear Flowers of Eastern China might encourage suspicion – too sensational perhaps?’

  ‘Mr Beauchamp, if my wife sees me reading a book with either title it will encourage more than suspicion; it will encourage the outbreak of World War Three. Find me a title that will make her shy away from me as from a wasps’ nest.’

  Randy’s finger continued to travel down a fresh page of the black leather book.

  ‘How about The European Monetary System 1650–1900?’

  ‘I think that would suit most perfectly, Mr Beauchamp, most perfectly.’

  Randy effectively swapped both book wrappers and, having wrapped the sequel in brown paper, he watched his customer exit from the shop with a look of paternal pride.

  ‘Bless him, he is such a DOM, and one of my best summer customers.’ He turned and smiled at Sam. ‘And what the silly old fool doesn’t realise is that his wife comes here for just the same reasons as he.’ He picked up his black leather book once more, and ran his finger down a list. ‘She is currently reading that age-old classic Old Men Forget – and if you believe that, you are a better man than I, Gunga Din.’

  Sam smiled. He had been coming to Beetle’s since he was quite small, and for precisely the same purposes as the American gentleman. His mother having forbidden the reading of such gloriously entertaining books as Five Go to Smuggler’s Top and The Castle of Adventure, Uncle Randy had taken it upon himself to keep his nephew supplied with Enid Blyton’s popular classics.

  Sam had regularly taken the number nine bus from Kensington, in company with his dog, and having been deposited in Knightsbridge, made the walk through the back streets to the shop.

  ‘This is our secret,’ Uncle Randy would murmur, handing him a mug of hot chocolate and the latest forbidden Blyton. ‘Not a word to anyone.’ Or a hurried phone call would reveal, ‘Keep it under your hat – tell no one, dear boy – the latest Adventure is in.’

  His secret forbidden life at Beetle’s Bookshop, combined with the wonder of the children’s adventures in the stories, became a magical part of Sam’s London holidays, so much so that by contrast summers in Somerset spent riding and swimming, walking and rambling seemed positively ordinary by comparison.

  Now he looked around the shop, searching for Arietta. Seeing this, Randy tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘I forgot to say, the poor child has been called home. I must tell her that her mother telephoned when she gets back from taking that book to Eccleston Street. It seems that her mother is far from better, and is calling for her only daughter.’

  Sam frowned. Up until now it had not occurred to him that Arietta, she of the delightfully disdainful ways, had parents, particularly not a mother. For a second it seemed to make her ordinary, less in some way, until he realised that it was only practical, after all. Someone had to give birth to you. Even he had a mother, although not a father – the poor chap having copped it during the Normandy landings, which had probably been the reason his mother had been so strict. Purposefully intent on making up to him for no masculine presence in his life, she had assumed the role of a sergeant major, or in her particular case, now he came to think of it, a general.

  Minutes later Sam left the shop and went round to his studio, which was situated among many studios in a cul-de-sac off the lower end of the King’s Road. He climbed the dark stairs, thinking of Arietta, and having let himself into the reassuring room that was both his bread and butter
and his staff of life, his raison d’être and, until now, his greatest love, he started to prepare a canvas, or rather, he started to attack a large canvas. Before he had even started to draw he knew what he would call it – Absence.

  Despite its being only a few weeks since she had left, Arietta found going back to Rushington an interesting experience, for not only, as is always the case, did it seem smaller, it seemed to her that she had never really lived there. She already felt as if she did not belong, or as if she was in some way a prodigal returning home, in want of forgiveness. Certainly her mother greeted her as such, opening the front door and, having seen who it was, walking off down the hallway to the kitchen, as if just the sight of her daughter was enough to make her flee.

  ‘Hallo,’ Arietta called to the retreating back.

  There was no answer from the owner of the back.

  Arietta followed Audrey into the kitchen where she had already placed a kettle on the stove.

  ‘You said to come at once,’ Arietta stated, gazing in some surprise at her perfectly healthy mother.

  ‘I certainly did. Your Uncle Bob will be here before long. I had to call a family conference. We have a crisis on our hands.’

  Arietta groaned inwardly. She knew exactly what the family conference would be about. It had always been the same. Ever since she’d been quite small her mother had taken it upon herself to call ‘family conferences’, and they had always been for one reason and one reason alone – what Uncle Bob always diplomatically referred to as ‘Mummy’s having difficulty managing’.

  ‘Did you have to call Uncle Bob? Couldn’t he have been told on the telephone?’

  ‘Certainly not. What an appalling idea. I never discuss family matters on the telephone. You never know who may be listening.’

  Arietta had long ago recognised this attitude to the telephone as being a direct offshoot of her mother’s generation having, during the war, absorbed the government directive ‘careless talk costs lives’; so, knowing of old that there was nothing she could do about it, she fell silent. There was a sound of a fly buzzing around the kitchen window, and somewhere outside someone in a nearby cottage was mowing their lawn. The kettle had boiled. Her mother now made them tea, which she knew Arietta disliked.

  As they drank the tea, which in the silence sounded louder than it should, her mother’s large eyes fell on Arietta’s handbag.

  ‘What an expensive item,’ she murmured. ‘I can’t afford such a handbag. As a matter of fact, I can hardly afford to pay the milkman.’

  Arietta sighed inwardly. For some reason, ever since she was quite small, it had always been the milkman that Audrey had not been able to afford. If Uncle Bob or the Chantrys gave her a postal order for Christmas or her birthday, it was always palmed by her mother on the excuse that ‘the milkman’ needed paying.

  Without saying a word Arietta took her wallet from her handbag, and carefully placed some notes on the kitchen table. Equally silently Audrey took the notes and put them in a jam jar. After which they continued to sip their tea.

  ‘What time will Uncle Bob be here?’ Arietta called, as she stood at the kitchen sink, washing up their tea things, and her mother went through to the hall to brush her hair and refresh her lipstick.

  ‘Any minute. As a matter of fact, that will probably be him now.’

  Arietta, wiping her hands on the roller towel, watched from the kitchen doorway as her mother hurried to open the front door. It was really too pathetic, but she found that she could not stop herself from hoping that her mother would greet Uncle Bob in precisely the same manner that she had greeted Arietta, but she was doomed to be disappointed. As soon as Uncle Bob’s short, square, tweed-suited figure with its army haircut – one back hair of which always refused to sit down – was seen to be filling the cottage doorway with its comfortingly homely appearance, Audrey Staunton’s expression changed to one of such warmth and charm that Arietta found herself turning away, not quite able to take the all-too-obvious contrast. Once again she wished passionately that she had been an orphan, brought up in some stark institution, owing nothing to anyone, able to make her own way in life without looking to the right or the left, seeing only ahead to some pin of light in the dark tunnel. The light being the future, the dark being the present.

  For some reason they always went into the dining room for Audrey’s ‘family conferences’. Today was to be no exception.

  ‘Well, there we have it, Bob. The bank manager is being really harsh. This poor little house, my only security, will have to be sold,’ Audrey finished, laughing humourlessly.

  They were seated around the small oak dining table whose sides conveniently let down. Uncle Bob was looking grave but sympathetic. He always looked grave when it came to Audrey and her finances.

  ‘That is most uncomfortable for you, Audrey,’ he agreed. ‘If the bank is being disagreeable that is most uncomfy for you.’

  ‘Of course, now that Arietta is able to go out to work, it seems to me, after all I have done for her, that it is only right that she could contribute to the household, find a job locally, pay me weekly for her keep, help towards the expense of running the place. I heard only recently of a very good position with luncheon vouchers for a young woman with secretarial qualifications at the bacon factory near Steyning. They wanted someone presentable, with good speeds, which I must say Arietta has got, although of course she might have to be spruced up.’

  She added the last observation with a disparaging glance at Arietta’s Mrs Chantry-made suit.

  Uncle Bob turned his grave owl-like gaze upon his only niece, and stared at her wordlessly for a few seconds, assessing her ability to earn money, before turning back to his sister-in-law.

  ‘I would agree that, in theory, that would be a good idea, Audrey, of course it would.’

  Arietta’s heart sank. She dropped her eyes to the table. It was gate-legged and she had always hated it. Their cottage dining room was her least favourite room. She did not like the way it looked, or its stale unused smell; nor did she like the hatch through which she had, on occasion, had to push food for informal lunches or suppers, food that was served to visiting friends from the village. She could hear a fly buzzing somewhere around the window. Judging from the sound it was making, it seemed like her, desperate to get out, to get away, to fly off. Money – it was always money with Audrey. Arietta could never understand why her mother could not manage better, why they always seemed to have lurched from one eternal financial crisis to another. Why did Audrey find it so difficult to do this thing called ‘managing’? Everyone else’s mother had managed, somehow, but Audrey never had. But where did the money go, for heaven’s sake?

  ‘How much are you earning in your little job?’ Uncle Bob asked, taking out his pipe and lighting it.

  Arietta thought with longing of Beetle’s Bookshop, of making coffee for Mr Beauchamp, of the different customers that provided such colour to the day, of the bustle of the streets round about, the restaurants, and the shops. She hated the smell of pipe smoke. She hated her mother, and she even, fleetingly, hated poor old Uncle Bob.

  She resolved to lie about how much she earned, it was the only way, but before she could lie or even try a little obfuscation, Uncle Bob had turned his gaze back to Audrey.

  ‘I don’t think we can call on Arietta for support in anything we might be planning, as yet, Audrey,’ he went on gravely before Arietta could reply. ‘Truly I don’t. Arietta is but a fledgeling, only a fledgeling.’

  ‘She can earn more. She must be able to earn more than she is doing at present, whatever it is that she is earning. She has to bring home more bacon,’ Audrey insisted, her expression hardening, the idea of her daughter being a fledgeling leaving her palpably unmoved.

  ‘I think what has to happen, Audrey, is that I will have to have a word with your bank manager,’ Uncle Bob continued, as if Audrey had not spoken.

  ‘And I think what will have to happen is that Arietta will have to come home and try and earn a dece
nt wage,’ Audrey said, staring at her daughter. ‘That is what she will have to do.’

  Uncle Bob removed his pipe from his mouth and set it in the ashtray in front of him.

  ‘Is this a possibility, Arietta?’

  ‘I don’t know, Uncle Bob. I mean, I have only had two jobs so far, and they both paid the same. I don’t know how much I could earn, but I do love my job, really I do. It is so interesting, and I meet such interesting people. I don’t think I would like the bacon factory at Steyning much.’

  It must have been the look in Arietta’s eyes that could not have been very different from the look that she had used to give him when he took them both on holiday and a hungover Audrey had set about threatening Arietta with a myriad of undeserved punishments, because Uncle Bob promptly picked up his pipe again.

  ‘Well, at any rate, Audrey, we must admit that this is at least good. The work Arietta is undertaking is obviously of great interest to her, and in my experience interesting work is always underpaid, for the very good reason that it puts the employer in the catbird seat, and he knows he can pay less. That being so, I suggest that I supplement Arietta’s wage, and make it clear to the bank manager that you, Audrey, must not be bullied over your little account, which I will settle for you at once. What a horrid man. He must be treated like a flunkey, really he must, for that is all he is, his master being the board.’

  He smiled, picked up his pipe and relit it, and as he did so Arietta realised that Uncle Bob really must like being called to Audrey’s rescue, which meant that now he was really enjoying being called to Arietta’s too. He liked being needed, he liked looking after what he would doubtless, when at his golf club, call his ‘womenfolk’. He liked the dependency, which must mean that he did not really care too much to keep Audrey to any kind of financial plan, that he fully expected her to overspend in order that he could be called in, and by doing so feel less lonely.

  ‘Such a plain man, which is probably why he’s never married,’ Audrey said eventually, watching him driving off. ‘I don’t know what Bob would do without us. We are, after all, his only relatives, and really his only interest in life beside his golf club.’ She stayed staring out of the window until the car disappeared from sight. ‘There he goes off to his little house in Shere with only his antiques for company. Poor old Bob, he really needs us,’ she added without either affection or satisfaction.