Read Online Gold Digger by Frances Fyfield - Free Book Online Page A

girl to a woman. Thomas sat down on the spindly dressing-table chair she had vacated, clutching his chest, mimicking a heart attack and fanning himself.
    ‘Oh my, I’m too old for this. The stress, the stress. You’ve got to wear clothes otherwise you’ll get a chill and I shall be incoherent. Am I too old for this?’
    ‘Think of Picasso,’ she said. ‘And you’re much better looking than him.’
    Thomas wasn’t remotely old to her. He simply was what he was and she adored him. She was struggling into a tightdress, and stood with one arm in it, one arm out, striking a comical pose, yanking it down over her knees, getting stuck in the thing, peeking at him through a sleeve, looking at his velvet jacket.
    ‘I wonder what’s it like to be elegant?’ she asked him.
    ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said.
    Thomas was remarkably inept with his own clothes today. Vintage velvet jacket and unmatched trousers, a lovely clashing ensemble which had virtue in her eyes, simply because it was what he wanted to wear and it showed off the fine colour of his skin and the whiteness of his hair. She came and sat next to him.
    ‘Will they turn up?’ she asked. ‘Please, let them turn up and see you so handsome.’
    ‘
If
my daughters turn up,’ he said. ‘They may behave badly. Announce just cause and impediment.’
    She seized his hand and kissed it.
    ‘But it was right to ask them,’ she insisted.
    ‘Even after they threatened to put me in the madhouse?’
    It was a ragged red dress she had on, but sublimely comfortable. At the end of her third summer, her skin really was the colour of sand.
    ‘Thomas, my dearest and only love, I want to know. I want to know that you aren’t doing this to spite them, because if you are, it isn’t a good enough reason. I don’t
need
a ring.’
    He stroked her head. ‘But I do,’ he said. ‘I want to do this for the future. To keep us safe. To acknowledge you for being what you are. To make us partners in name. Let no man cast us asunder. And above all, because I’m so … ’ he struggled for words ‘… so very
proud
of you.’
    ‘Shush,’ she said, always embarrassed by compliments.
    ‘And because, do you know what, I have always wanted to be a
happily
married man.’
    She took his face between her hands and kissed him. Then she pulled him upright, straightened his clothes and regarded him with frank admiration. So handsome in his crazy garb; she curtsied to him.
    ‘You can run away afterwards,’ he said, solemnly, tucking her arm into his. ‘When I turn into a Frog.’
    ‘My Prince,’ she said. ‘Shall we walk, or shall we take the pumpkin?’
    She was thinking,
if you knew how much I love you, you might be the one to run away.
    ‘N ot a good day’s work,’ Jones said later to another onlooker of his acquaintance, both of them waiting outside the Town Hall that morning. The onlooker spat on the ground.
    Jones looked anxiously at the gathering crowd. News like this got about: there were curious faces, predictable remarks, such as,
I can see what’s in it for her, what’s in it for him?
But there was distraction. It was early afternoon and warm, a group of drunks newly released from the pub reeling into the space, guests from another wedding earlier in the day, a warring family spoiling for a fight, just there by accident. Jones’s attention was distracted by a figure on the other side of the street and he moved quickly.
    Thomas and Diana emerged into the light, blinking at the unexpected gathering. The man Jones saw had one arm outstretched towards her as if begging, as she moved into sunlight. She was blinded by the light, squinting, looking heavenwards to focus, confused by the presence of people. Jones stopped the man with a punch: he stumbled down the step into the drunken group and from then on, the fightstarted from nowhere and swayed across the street, as if someone had ignited the blue touch paper and failed to retire.
    The witnesses to the marriage, someone