The Promise (44 page)

At just on four Belle watched from further down the Paragon as the bridge players left the Forbes-Altons’ house. It was already dark, but light from the hall at number twelve was bright enough to see Mrs Forbes-Alton silhouetted in the doorway, and Belle could hear her braying voice saying her goodbyes.

Two of the women got into a motor car waiting for them while the others scuttled quickly to neighbouring houses. The front door closed, and Belle strode purposefully up to it and rang the bell.

She had made a real effort to look stylishly eye-catching. It was important that she conveyed the message that she was tough and ruthless. A covetable scarlet pill-box hat set off her dark curls, and she wore a coat that Jimmy had bought her soon after they were married, navy-blue, fitted to her waist, and double-breasted in the fashionable Cossack style with fur trim at the hem, neck and cuffs.

As Belle had hoped, Mrs Forbes-Alton opened the door herself, imagining it was one of her friends returning because she’d left something behind. As she saw Belle standing there, her smile vanished.

Belle put one neatly booted foot in the door to prevent her closing it. ‘Yes, it’s me. I think it’s time we had a talk,’ she said.

‘I have nothing to talk to you about,’ the older woman boomed. ‘Get away from my house.’

She was taller than Belle remembered and very stout. Her grey hair was elaborately arranged in sausage-like curls on the top of her head, which only served to draw attention to her many chins. She was wearing a purple tea dress with a ruffle of lace across her big chest, and the colour made her look bilious.

‘I don’t need you to talk, just to listen,’ Belle said with a hint of menace. ‘If you won’t listen I’ll go straight to your chum Mr Blessard and speak to him. You won’t like that.’

‘How dare you come round here threatening me?’ she said, her small pale blue eyes wide with shock at Belle’s audacity.

‘I haven’t threatened you at all,’ Belle said airily. ‘I only said it would be better for you if you listened to me. There’s no threat in that. Now, are you going to invite me in, or must I shout on your doorstep?’

Belle had expected to be nervous; her biggest fear was that she wouldn’t be brave enough or articulate enough to deliver her ultimatum properly. But now she was here, standing in front of this woman who had given Miranda so much unhappiness, Belle could see she was just a bully, and like most bullies, all she feared was someone stronger than herself.

The older woman’s face showed what she was thinking. She didn’t want a scene on the doorstep that someone might overhear, and hoped that Belle would be intimidated once she was in the Forbes-Altons’ grand house.

‘I am not in the habit of talking to anyone but tradesmen on my doorstep,’ she said and opened the door wider, turned and strode off across the hall. Belle smiled to herself. The woman thought this would make her falter, but Belle closed the front door behind her and followed Mrs Forbes-Alton into the drawing room. Two card tables and chairs were set up there, the cards still lying on them. Belle guessed the maid had already left for the day or she would have been clearing this away.

She walked around the two tables towards the fire and without being asked sat down in a winged armchair closest to it. ‘A lovely room,’ she said, looking round with interest. It was in fact very Victorian in style, with too much heavy furniture, sombre pictures and countless ugly ornaments. ‘Of course Miranda described it in detail to me, so I feel I’ve been here before.’

‘You are a very impertinent young woman. Kindly remember your place,’ Mrs Forbes-Alton barked indignantly. She stood behind a chair glowering at Belle.

‘My place?’ Belle sniggered. ‘What a delightfully old-fashioned notion. Not one I hold with at all.’

‘What do you want?’ Mrs Forbes-Alton asked, looking nervous now. Belle guessed that was because she was alone in the house.

‘I want you to tell your friends and cronies in the village that you were fooled by Blessard into believing I was a woman of easy virtue. You are going to make amends for the hurt you have caused my dear aunt, Mrs Franklin, by making sure that in future she is invited along to all the social functions she always used to attend.’

‘But you have been a lady of the night, that is fact,’ Mrs Forbes-Alton snapped at Belle.

‘The truth of the matter is that I was a victim of an evil man who was hanged for his crimes,’ Belle said. ‘I was just fifteen when I was abducted and taken away to France. But I haven’t come here today to discuss your inability to separate fact and pure fiction about my past, or to take you to task for having no compassion for someone who has been treated so badly.’ She paused to let that sink in.

‘My aunt, Mrs Franklin, is one of the kindest, best women who ever lived,’ she went on. ‘And you have wronged her grievously with your malicious gossip and tittle-tattle. As you doubtless know, my husband was wounded in action, and because of this we cannot move away to somewhere where people are kinder. So you, my dear Mrs Forbes-Alton, are going to make things better for us all.’

‘Why should I do anything for you, a mere trollop?’ the older woman snorted with disdain.

‘Because if you don’t I shall shame your family name as you have done mine,’ Belle said. ‘Believe me, I know things about you all that would not just make people in Blackheath sit up and take notice, but would also reach the national press.’

‘What rubbish! There is nothing whatsoever about our family that is shameful.’

‘No?’ Belle raised one eyebrow and smirked. ‘A woman who gave out white feathers makes sure her sons have desk jobs for the war? How hypocritical is that? When her daughter is killed in France she basks in the reflected glory that she was doing her bit for the war, yet the truth is Miranda wanted to go to France to get away from you.’

‘My sons are doing vital war work, and who would believe that Miranda wanted to get away from me?’

‘People would believe it if I was to let the newspapers publish your letters to her,’ Belle said. ‘And I have them, I brought them home from France. It is hard to believe any mother could write such cold, unfeeling letters.’

‘People of my standing do not wear their hearts on their sleeves like the working classes,’ Mrs Forbes-Alton retorted. ‘If they were published I’d get nothing but sympathy for my loss. It would be you who would be vilified.’

‘I agree your class are not emotional about their children, possibly because you put them in the hands of nursemaids at birth,’ Belle said. ‘But of course there is also the matter of the abortion Miranda had in the summer of 1914. How does abortion go down among people of your standing?’

The woman blanched and caught hold of the back of the chair to steady herself. ‘What can you mean? I cannot believe you’d claim such a vile thing.’

‘Do sit down before you fall down,’ Belle said sweetly. She was beginning to enjoy herself now and she could almost hear her old friend applauding her.

‘She didn’t do that, she couldn’t have,’ the woman blustered, but she sank down into the chair.

‘Oh yes she did. That’s how I got to know Miranda. I took care of her when she collapsed outside my shop after having it.’

‘That is malicious rubbish!’

‘Not at all. Think back. I’m sure you must recall the afternoon in August of 1914 when she telephoned and left a message with your maid to say she was staying the night with her friend in Belgravia? She telephoned from my shop. I walked back here with her the following morning once the baby had come away. She had a bruise on her forehead and she told you she’d fallen down in the street.’

Belle watched the other woman’s face and she could see that she did remember that day.

‘How can you make up such a thing when Miranda is dead?’ Mrs Forbes-Alton asked, but the power had gone out of her voice.

‘You know I am not making it up. I even have proof in a letter from her thanking me for my help,’ Belle said. ‘Even you must have wondered how and why we became such close friends.’

Again she saw something flit across the woman’s face. No doubt she was remembering times when she’d berated her daughter for choosing the company of a ‘common shop girl’ instead of someone of her own class.

‘She had an affair with a man she met in Greenwich Park. He was a scoundrel and a married man too. Poor Miranda thought he loved her, but as soon as she told him about the baby she was carrying, he disappeared. She risked her life having an abortion because she knew you would disown her.

‘Of course I have no wish to drag my dearest friend’s name through the mud,’ Belle went on. ‘But if she had lived to know what you did to my aunt and me, she would have been utterly disgusted by you and would have urged me to use every last thing I know about her to shame you.’

Belle paused again for a moment to let her words speak for themselves.

‘I grew to love Miranda,’ she said eventually. ‘And she loved me too. In truth I was the only person who cared about her at all until she met Will Fergus, the American sergeant she met in France whom she intended to marry. I’ll bet you didn’t even reply to his letter after her death, did you?’

The woman opened her mouth and then closed it.

‘I thought not,’ Belle said. ‘And he was a good man. Miranda was the happiest she’d ever been in her whole life when she met him. But you couldn’t understand why he and I were so distressed at her death, because you never cared about her. What sort of a woman are you that you couldn’t love your own child?’

‘I did care for her,’ Mrs Forbes-Alton said weakly.

‘No, you didn’t. She was right in thinking you’d throw her out on to the street if you’d known about the baby. You destroyed my aunt’s happiness too, and yes, before you ask, she knows everything about Miranda, yet she has never breathed a word of it to anyone, not even after what you’ve done to her. But I am not so kind. I want some rough justice.’

‘How much do you want?’

Belle threw back her head and laughed. ‘You think I want money from you? I wouldn’t take as much as an old coat of yours if I was freezing. I’ve already told you part of what I want, and that is to see Mrs Franklin reinstated in all the village events. I want you to greet her warmly in church, in front of all those small-minded acolytes who suck up to you.’

Belle could see the woman was going to agree to that.

‘You said “part” of what you want,’ she said cautiously.

‘Yes. I want to see Mrs Franklin happy again, but the other part is that you speak to Mr Blessard’s superiors on that rag of a newspaper he works for. You tell them he twisted your words when you were griefstricken about your daughter, and that what he printed about me was lies. And you make sure they dismiss Blessard.’

‘How can I do that?’

Belle was delighted to see how scared she looked.

‘If you and your husband can get your sons safe desk jobs in Whitehall for the duration of the war, this little thing shouldn’t prove a problem. You must stress that I could have sued the papers for slander, as all I was doing in Paris was learning millinery. And you can point out that my husband is a war hero, and that I’ve spent the war caring for men at the Herbert and driving ambulances. As long as they print an apology and the scurrilous story is quashed for good and my sweet, kind aunt can hold her head up in the village again, that will do.’

‘I don’t know that I can do this.’

Belle shrugged. ‘Well, if you don’t, you know what’s going to happen. I’ll start talking, very loudly. I’m betting you won’t want your other daughter’s chances of marriage being scuppered by this – I heard she’s become engaged to a viscount.’

Pure terror flitted across the older woman’s face. ‘Please don’t do that, Mrs Reilly,’ she begged. ‘I’m sorry that I hurt you and your aunt. I was very upset at Miranda dying and that man put words into my mouth, but I’ll try and put it right.’

‘You must do more than try. I’ll give you just two weeks. Keep firmly in your mind that I have nothing left to lose. The war has made my husband a cripple, I’ve lost my best friend and my good name. You on the other hand have everything to lose. If this matter isn’t put right within two weeks, then I shall start my own little campaign against you and your family.’

With that Belle got up, smoothing down her coat, and walked proudly to the door. ‘No need to see me out,’ she said. ‘I can find my way out of anywhere and anything.’

Chapter Twenty-Four

Mog came running into the kitchen one afternoon in April, her small face flushed with excitement. ‘They asked me if I would run the cake stall at the summer fête,’ she blurted out. ‘I can’t believe it! Mrs Parsons said that I was the best cake maker in the village and I was an inspiration to the younger women.’

Belle was doing the ironing, and although Mog’s triumph was hardly important when just a few days earlier they’d heard the sobering news that the Germans had broken through the Allied lines in France, it was a victory for Mog. Belle stood the flat iron on its end, and went over to hug Mog. ‘Quite right too,’ she said. ‘If anyone deserves something good to happen, it’s you.’

Jimmy was sitting by the stove reading a newspaper and looked up with a smirk. ‘I’ve been telling people for years you are the best cake maker in London.’

Mog glowed even more at that. ‘But how will I get the ingredients with it all on ration?’ she asked anxiously.

‘They’ll expect you to make Garth pull some strings to get them,’ Jimmy said.

Garth did keep in with black marketeers, and the odd pound of ham, butter or cheese came his way, but Belle felt the way Jimmy had phrased his remark implied that Mog had only been shown favour today because of her husband’s ability to get hold of anything.

Jimmy had never been cynical before he went to war, but he was now. His old warmth and sense of humour did surface again now and then, but sadly most of the time he was very dour.

‘The ladies on the fête committee wouldn’t know about such things,’ Mog said. ‘But maybe they’ll have something in their store cupboards to help me out.’

Belle was tempted to pull Jimmy up on what he’d said, but decided it was better to let it pass as Mog hadn’t appeared to see it as a slight. In the past couple of months he had improved in some areas. He talked more and he had taken over doing the accounts. He also had fewer nightmares.