The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp: ‘A razor-sharp retelling of Vanity Fair’ Louise O’Neill

Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom by now and she could see that her saviour was a grizzled old man, though the grizzle was probably dirt, because he didn’t smell that fresh. In fact, she wasn’t sure which one of them was the most malodorous – the old man or Hodson, who kept wiping his slobbery snout on Becky’s shoulder. Most of the man’s face was obscured by a filthy trucker’s cap that was pulled down so she could only make out his mouth and chin, which didn’t look like it had seen a razor in months. His clothes looked and smelt filthy too: a pair of ragged trousers and an old jumper full of holes.

He could be anyone. Maybe he’d lured many a young woman to a grisly end by picking them up outside the station. Maybe that was why the Crawleys needed a new nanny, because each new nanny was intercepted before she could start her new job.

‘Do you work for Sir Crawley, then?’ she asked, striving hard to keep the belligerence out of her voice. ‘Is it far to the house?’

‘Far enough.’

Becky settled back with a tiny but discontent huff. She had done all that boxing with Jos, so if worst came to worst, she could whack him around the head followed up by a swift knee to his bollocks, then she’d run for her life.

They rounded a bend at breakneck speed, which threw Becky against the door, and just as she righted herself, she could see that they were travelling up a drive lined by trees, and in the distance there was a big house, the warm glow of electric light at some of its many windows. They were crunching over gravel now as they drove around a big ornamental pond then veered left. Maybe her dreams of gracious country living were about to come true after all. Or maybe not.

‘This is Queen’s Crawley, is it?’ Becky asked as they whisked past the grand front door. She thought she might cry if they kept going, disappearing back into the darkness until they reached this man’s hovel and whatever terrible fate awaited her.

They took a sharp right, just past the house, under an arch and Becky let out a shaky breath as they came to a jerky halt inside a yard, which must have been the old stable block.

‘Front door ain’t for the likes of us, is it?’ The man opened his door so he could cough then spit on to the gravel.

Becky clenched her fists, felt Hodson’s hot breath on her neck again.

Enough!

‘How dare you!’ she hissed, turning to the man so he could get the full benefit of her fury. She was so angry she could hardly force the words out. ‘Just wait until Sir Pitt Crawley hears about the way you’ve treated me.’ Even in the midst of her rage, she wasn’t going to admit that she’d been scared half to death. Wouldn’t give this … this … dim-witted yokel the satisfaction. ‘You’re rude and you’re inconsiderate and you smell like a rubbish tip!’

She expected him to spit on the ground again. Or worse, spit on her, but he did neither, just took off his cap so Becky could see that his greasy hair was as neglected as the rest of him. He looked at her and grinned – she was surprised to see that his teeth weren’t blackened pegs but actually were even and gleamed white in the gloom – and there was an expectant air about him, as if he was waiting for Becky to say that she wouldn’t really go to Sir Pitt Crawley and do everything in her power to have him fired.

In that case, he was going to be disappointed.

‘I might only be the nanny but I’m not some silly little girl who’s only used to dealing with naughty toddlers.’ She drew herself up. ‘You try something like this again, and I will make you sorry you were ever fucking born,’ she finished with a determined sniff.

There was a moment’s silence as they both stared at each other, weighing up their enemy, then the man smiled again. He ran his fingers, nails black with dirt, through his hair, then offered his hand to Becky who looked at it in much the same way that she’d look at Hodson if he suddenly took a dump on her bag.

‘Are we clear?’ she asked.

‘Clear as crystal,’ he said, not in a guttural drawl but in plummy tones that had delighted both theatre-goers and film critics alike. ‘I’m Sir Pitt Crawley, delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Sharp. May I welcome you to Queen’s Crawley, and I hope that your stay here will be a long and happy one.’

Chapter 11

Sir Pitt Crawley, knighted by the Queen for his ground-breaking contribution to British film and theatre, had woken up one morning, taken stock of his life and decided that it was shallow and empty.

He was in LA at the time and had been woken up by the sound of his girlfriend (the second Lady Crawley turned a blind and grateful eye to Pitt’s peccadillos) on the phone to her therapist. Or he might have been pulled out of sleep by the sound of his gardening crew trimming the hedges that had been trimmed only the day before. Or awoken by his personal trainer calling him on his cellphone because Sir Pitt was currently meant to be doing lunges, squats, burpees and other undignified exercises in his basement gym.

Later he would spend two hours in make-up before emoting in front of a green screen so CGI effects could be added in later. And later still, he was due to have dinner and drinks with a producer who he hated and the producer’s wife, who he’d slept with and who now also hated him.

It was all bullshit, Pitt thought. He thought it again. Then he said the words out loud: ‘It’s all bullshit!’ He scrambled out of bed, naked as the day he was born, flung open the windows so he could stand out on the balcony that overlooked the Olympic-sized swimming pool and shout, ‘IT’S ALL BULLSHIT!’ to the heavens and the bemusement of his gardening crew. And it was at that moment that he had an epiphany, and a few hours after that he was at LAX waiting to fly back to England to find his true, authentic self.

WHAT A PITT-Y!

Legendary luvvie Sir Pitt Crawley retires from acting to become a blacksmith

The papers had been full of incredulous headlines, passing it off as pretentious nonsense, but Pitt had retired to the crumbling estate that had been in his family for generations (the original Pitt Crawley made his fortune in the brewing of beer for none other than Queen Elizabeth I) to strip away the trappings of fame and adulation and get back to nature.

And yes, he had the old forge on his land restored and got the only blacksmith in the county to give him lessons. It transpired that blacksmithing was very strenuous work and Pitt was knocking on for sixty-five (but a very distinguished sixty-five), so when the only horse he ever shod promptly went lame, he gave up his Lawrentian dreams of hewing metal, if not his dreams of a more authentic life.

It turned out that living authentically also meant eschewing soap and water so Pitt could retain the earthy scent that was entirely masculine, striding about his grounds doing the odd bit of scything (though he had a ride-on lawnmower that did the job far more effectively) and working on his memoirs.

Every now and again his accountant would ring with bad news. Then Pitt would manage to wash, shave and fly to Japan to do a lucrative advertising campaign. He had also appeared in a very successful film franchise of a much-loved series of children’s books, but the director was an old, old, old friend ‘and the books are much beloved by my own dear children,’ as Pitt explained to the journalist from the Sunday Times who’d dared to suggest that Pitt wasn’t really that retired.

Pitt had many children, and it wasn’t as if he could let them starve, which would be quite likely if he’d persevered with his dreams of becoming a blacksmith.

He had two sons, Pitt Junior and Rawdon, from his marriage to his first wife, who he’d met at RADA, falling in love with her haughty, antagonistic performance as Kat in The Taming of the Shrew. Pitt had endured ten long, haughty and antagonistic years with Francesca before she’d been involved in a car crash, lingered in ICU for a bit and then died.

‘It was a merciful release,’ Pitt had said with much feeling during Francesca’s eulogy. Not a dry eye in the house, he’d been pleased to note as he’d hugged his two young sons to him in the Actor’s Church in Covent Garden. He couldn’t help but think what a wonderful picture they’d make on the front pages of the newspapers the next day.

Pitt hadn’t intended to marry again; not when he could shag lots of beautiful women, then end things with a heartfelt ‘I just can’t love again since Frankie’s death’ when he got bored with them. Alas, eight years ago, he’d made the mistake of shagging Rosa, the pretty daughter of the landlord of Mudbury’s only pub, The Pig’s Ear, and when the stupid girl got pregnant, said landlord had come after Pitt with his shotgun and a journalist from The Sun.

Still, it wasn’t all bad. Pitt had always said that if he got married again, he’d choose a simple woman and Rosa, bless her, was as simple as any woman he’d found. She popped out a child every couple of years (never could remember to take her pill) and now they had at least four young children (maybe even five) running around, though neither he nor Rosa could be relied upon to feed them regularly or get them enrolled in school, hence the need for a nanny. Not that they could keep a nanny for long, being as isolated as they were, with patchy WiFi, and Rosa having very funny ideas about raising children. She’d never been the same after an immersive yoga retreat in Mykonos to relieve a bout of post-natal depression following the birth of their second child. Or was it the third? What with all the yoga, when Rosa did pop out yet more sprogs, her figure snapped right back and it also made her very bendy, so Sir Pitt managed to overlook her other shortcomings.

The other reason that they couldn’t hold on to a nanny was that each girl objected to Pitt’s true, authentic self and his true, authentic smell. Back in the day, he’d been fighting them off but now they fought him off, and the last one had actually gagged when he’d tried to steal a kiss, and she’d then threatened to go to the papers.

But the latest one, pretty little Becky, was shaping up quite nicely. She’d claimed not to know who he was but Pitt knew that was just the dance of courtship. And the children seemed to adore her, Pitt thought as he watched the new nanny cavort with a horde of children on the ragged lawn he could spy from his study window. What a charming picture they all made, he thought to himself indulgently.

Like Diana frolicking with her nymphs. Little Pitt wouldn’t mind a spot of frolicking himself …

*

‘If you call your brother a see you next Tuesday again, then it’s nothing but vegan food for the rest of the week, you horrible child,’ pretty little Becky shouted at Calliope Crawley. ‘At least say it in French like I taught you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Calliope said and immediately stopped trying to throttle her younger brother. ‘Please don’t take away our chicken nuggets. I’d rather that you beat us instead.’

‘Don’t push me any further then,’ Becky said warningly, because the merest hint of a threat worked wonders on the brats under her tender, not really that loving, care.

They were many little Crawleys. Becky wasn’t even sure that all of them belonged to Sir and Lady Crawley but suspected some of them came up from the village each day. Though she couldn’t imagine why, because being the offspring of the famous actor and his hippy-dippy wife was awful.

During her childhood, Becky had known real deprivation. Many times she’d had to sleep on the floor of assorted dosshouses, council B&Bs riddled with mould and mildew, once even a crack den. There had been many times when she’d gone to bed hungry. Her clothes came from charity shops and not a week went by without her being slapped so hard by one of her parents that she saw stars. But that was nothing compared to the torture that the poor Crawley children were put through on a daily basis.

For one thing there was no TV. Or rather, there was a TV in the drawing room but Sir Pitt was adamant that it would rot their young minds and also, he expected the children to spend most of their time outside, in the fresh air. Or the freezing cold. Or the pouring rain.

There was no WiFi either. Or rather, there was WiFi, but hardly any signal and Lady Crawley couldn’t remember the password and Sir Pitt wouldn’t tell Becky what it was because she was meant to be schooling his children in how to find their true, authentic selves.

Then there was the food. The little Crawleys had never once experienced the joy of a McDonalds Happy Meal. Not once. It was enough to make even Becky cry. The only chocolate they’d ever known was raw cacao. Sir Pitt was full Paleo and would only eat food that his primitive ancestors might have eaten, which involved a lot of meat and nuts and leafy vegetables. Becky didn’t know much about primitive man but she was pretty sure that he’d had a life expectancy of about twenty-five. Still, it had to be better than the radical vegan diet adopted by Lady Crawley. No wonder Mrs Tinker, the cook, was in a permanent foul mood as she tried to feed the children a balanced diet approved by both their parents.

‘Gluten-free, dairy-free, taste-free,’ she’d mutter every morning as she banged around the kitchen making a truly disgusting porridge flavoured with soy milk and whatever berries the children had foraged the day before.

Babs Pinkerton hadn’t thought to mention it but Becky was also expected to home school the children, though she’d rarely gone to school herself. They longed to go to school, Becky longed for them to go to school too – getting the crap kicked out of them a couple of times would be the making of them.

Not that Becky was softening. Her heart was still a hard little thing but she knew what it was like to have parents who were indifferent to anything but their own needs and desires.

Also, she’d learned an important lesson from her stay with the Sedleys. She’d spent all her time and energy on cultivating Amelia and Jos, when if she’d made herself indispensable to Mr and Mrs Sedley too, she’d probably still be enjoying the luxury of their six-bedroom Kensington house. So, this time round, she made sure that every member of the household could barely function without her.

It had been easy to win Rosa Crawley over. Anyone who did that much yoga and meditation and hadn’t eaten a bag of crisps in eight years was obviously desperately unhappy. Rosa had no friends because what passed for society in the back of beyond looked down on her for being a publican’s daughter, and her old friends were jealous of her new-found status and comforted themselves with the opinion that ‘Rosa’s really up herself now.’

Also, she wasn’t very bright and Becky had always found that stupid people tended towards unhappiness, since they lacked the inner reserves to entertain themselves. Still, Rosa was clever enough that she’d actually managed to pass her driving test, though she needed someone to navigate as she always got her left and right mixed up.

On Wednesday mornings, Becky would dump the children on Mrs Tinker and Rosa would drive them both to Portsmouth while she poured her heart out about how difficult it was to be married to a reclusive celebrity. ‘It weren’t so bad when he was in that there Hollywood half the time, but now he int, and he’s on me all the time, the randy bugger.’ She’d turn mournful eyes on Becky. ‘Rooting around like a pig going after truffles.’

‘Poor Rosa. You really deserve some me-time.’ This was all the encouragement Rosa needed to go off to be manipulated and palpated by a Brazilian masseur called Javier, and Becky would head off into town with Rosa’s credit card.

But it was when Becky suggested that Rosa get an IUD fitted that their bond was well and truly cemented: no more little Crawleys crawling about ever again.

With the children, it was easy to find out what they wanted most in the world, give it to them, then withhold it whenever they were being badly behaved bastards who should have been drowned at birth, which was quite a lot of the time.

What they wanted most in the world was everything that their parents denied them. Becky downloaded several Disney films on to the iPad she’d liberated from Amelia Sedley, and Frozen, in particular, transfixed them as if they were witnessing the opening of the Ark of the Covenant.

While Rosa was having her weekly massage, Becky would buy all the food that the children were usually forbidden: chicken nuggets, oven chips, Haribo and Heinz tomato ketchup. Pitt and Rosa never sat down with the children at meal times to know exactly what they were eating and Mrs Tinker would much rather shove some fish fingers under the grill than have to spend the best part of a day soaking mung beans and activating almonds.

Sir Pitt Crawley, on the other hand, was harder to crack; hard in the sense that he was perpetually horny.

Queen’s Crawley was a crumbling, draughty old house with antiquated plumbing, holes in the roof and a mouse infestation. There was barely a radiator to be seen, never mind the swimming pool Becky had once imagined. As she bedded down for yet another freezing night, swaddled in tracksuit, thick socks and several musty, hairy blankets, Becky would think longingly of the Sedleys’ house and in particular, the under-floor heating. She even missed the dour, monosyllabic Mr Sedley who’d hardly seemed to notice her at all, a welcome change from Sir Pitt who would burst into her room most evenings, commanding her to turn out the light.

‘I’m not made of money, little Becky, my residuals barely cover the day-to-day running of the estate. You keep burning electricity like this, we’ll all become destitute.’ Then he’d run his eyes over her blanket-clad form speculatively. ‘You know, if you’re cold … in the Army Cadets at school, when we went camping we’d huddle together …’

‘I’m not cold,’ Becky would say every time, her jaw clenched to stop her teeth from chattering. ‘I’m positively toasty.’

In spite of her nightly rejection of his advances, Sir Pitt was slowly falling under her spell. Like most actors, he loved to talk. Or rather he loved to talk at Becky and he was convinced that she loved to help him write his memoirs.

By now, Sir Pitt had quite forgotten that he’d seen Becky’s true, authentic self that first night. He much preferred her cow-eyed, mouth slightly parted, as she made sure his Dictaphone was recording as he orated about his transcendent performance in the Scottish play and ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I nearly worked with Scorsese? I didn’t? Oh, good! You’ll like this story, Becky, is that thing recording?’ And Becky much preferred to spend her evenings in Pitt’s study where there was a roaring fire even though sometimes he came and sat right next to her on a cracked leather Chesterfield and begged her to stroke Little Pitt. But when Sir Pitt had his back to her as he paced about the room and performed, there were all sorts of interesting pieces of paper in full view, from bank statements and credit-card bills to the Post-it note with the WiFi password scrawled on it.

Becky had arrived at Queen’s Crawley halfway through September and by November, the children adored her almost as much as they feared her. Lady Crawley treated Becky as a trusted confidante, Mrs Tinker regarded her as an ally and Sir Pitt wanted nothing more than ‘to become better acquainted, my dear’, so he’d started to wash more regularly.

It wasn’t the bright lights and the riches that Becky craved, but she was biding her time. Waiting. Sir Pitt was only semi-retired and he was still a famous actor. Sooner or later, he’d have to take another job, if only to pay the colossal tax bill that Becky had come across, and it wouldn’t be such a leap for Becky to make the move from nanny to PA. To swap nursery for film set where she could forge all sorts of useful friendships. Or maybe Rawdon Crawley might visit, Pitt’s youngest son from his first marriage, who Becky had on a google alert. He had brooding good looks and a successful film career, which was sure to become even more successful once he stopped gambling, drinking and partying hard with the young Hollywood set. He just needed the love of a good woman to steer him right.

In the meantime, the days passed in a quiet kind of monotony until Becky thought she might go mad with the boredom of it all. And just when she was trying desperately to come up with an exit strategy because she was twenty and she was wasting her best days and all her best assets in muddy Mudbury, Dame Matilda Crawley came to stay for Christmas.