‘I’m not interested in money,’ said Lady Rice. ‘I’m not one bit materialistic.’
She and Edwin lived quietly in Rice Court; they spent a great deal of time entwined in bed; not with great passion, but with considerable affection, secure in each other’s commitment. She didn’t see her friends: he didn’t see his. They smoked a great deal of dope. They went into the town for lunch and dinner, often to McDonald’s. They relived, and recovered from, their childhood. Within weeks of the wedding, Robert Jellico suggested Angelica use her funds to buy into the Rice Estate: with the money so released, Rice Court could be refurbished. The place had been closed to the public of late: an ornate plaster ceiling had fallen and injured a visitor. Insurance had paid but everyone had had a nasty shock. Robert Jellico’s perfect shirt had been seen awry and his smooth skin had sweated slightly. Money was being lost while the young couple idled and slept. Even Mrs MacArthur, housekeeper, who acted as their nanny, seemed vengeful, changing the sheets on the four-poster bed once a day, practically shaking the couple out of it; rattling empty Coke tins into black plastic sacks, hoovering roaches and snipped bits of this and that, broken matches, throwing out baked beans on plates cracked because Edwin had stepped on them by mistake.
‘She gets paid, doesn’t she?’ said Edwin. ‘Why does she get in such a state?’
Lady Rice wrote Robert Jellico a cheque for the amount the cash machine said she had in her current account, minus one thousand pounds. £234,000.00.
‘That has been in your current account,’ said Robert Jellico, dazedly. ‘Not a high interest account, not even a building society? What was your mother thinking about?’
Mrs White was busy thinking about Gerald Haverley mostly, and wondering why his wife Audrey was being so difficult, and why Mary, who once was such a good friend of Angelica’s, cut her dead on the street. It seemed strange to Mrs White, as it had to her daughter, that the world was so full of people who didn’t want you to be happy.
‘Take the money,’ said Angelica grandly. ‘Money is of no importance. Invest it in Rice Court, if that’s what you want. The Rice family is my family now, and that includes you, Robert.’ And indeed Robert Jellico, with his flat face, his overhanging eyelids, his cardinal’s mien, his grey eminence, seemed the old-worldly yet contemporary expression of the determined Rice soul. He it was who kept the balls of the whole business juggling in the air. For all his complicated love for Edwin, his weary disparagement of Angelica, they knew Robert Jellico was trustworthy enough. He knew money and property must be looked after. If Angelica’s money went into the tenderest, most vulnerable, most simply sacrificed, last-in-first-out enterprises of the Rice Estate, the crumple zone of the juggernaut, then that was the tax Angelica had to pay because she had no presentable family, and no social status; only money and a recent marriage. Robert Jellico made sure Angelica’s money did not go directly towards the rebuilding of Rice Court, in case of future litigation, and any claim that might be made alleging the place to be the matrimonial home. He was not so stupid and she did not notice. Who, lately married, ever anticipates divorce?
The day the money disappeared into Rice Estate coffers, Angelica sat up in bed and said, ‘Edwin, we have to stop this now. We’ve recovered from the past, which was an illness. I shall smoke no more dope.’
And nor did she, and presently he lost the habit too. They looked around and saw what they had, and it seemed full of promise.