Gull Island (16 page)

It was Barbara’s intention to find the Careys and ask them to look after Rosita until she was old enough to look after herself. She would return to Graham, Kate and Hattie and hope that, one day, when Rosita was past her difficult childhood, they would all be reunited.

They stayed one night in a cottage in Corn Town in the beautiful Vale of Glamorgan and the next day they continued their journey to the beach near Gull Island. Tired, hungry and with blisters on Rosita’s feet caused by the ill-fitting boots, they arrived to find the place empty and apparently
abandoned
.

They went inside and considered staying until the Careys returned. Surely they wouldn’t mind? But where were they? There were enough household goods to suggest they hadn’t gone for good. Yet there was an air of emptiness that seemed more than the absence of an afternoon.

Recent rain had come through the open door and some magazines left on the floor lay open as if just put down. They were soaked, sticking to the floor, and they tore as Barbara tried to lift them. A curtain had fallen down and mildew showed in its folds. Below the steps was a bicycle, rusted and with both tyres obviously punctured.

She went to look at Luke’s cottage. If only he were there. He would know what she should do; he would help, she knew it. But there was no sign of anyone. The place was as dead as the rocks on the beach. There was no evidence of anyone else within miles, the call of the gulls only
emphasizing
the loneliness.

Angry with the fate that seemed to deny her the slightest assistance, Barbara broke the locks on Luke’s cottage with a rock and went inside.

‘We’ll stay here for a while,’ she said. ‘Just until the Careys come back.’

‘I don’t mind if we stay here for ever and ever,’ Rosita said, wide-eyed. ‘Look at these chairs, Mam. All bouncy and soft and so pretty. Mam, can’t we stay for ever? He won’t find us here, will he?’

‘We aren’t running away from your father, Rosita,’ Barbara admonished. ‘We’re just arranging a little holiday for you.’

It wasn’t until the next day, when Barbara and Rosita went to town to buy food, that they learned the fate of the Careys. They had all caught
diphtheria
and that day had been taken to the isolation hospital. Thank goodness they hadn’t slept in their house where infection might still be present!

The first thing Barbara must do was collect and deliver the papers, and find someone willing to sell some on Henry’s usual corner. Without the few shillings his deliveries made they would be destitute. She went into the house, warning Rosita to stay clear, and found Henry’s notebook with his customers listed, together with what they owed.

The bicycle was tempting if only to carry the heavy papers or push Rosita for some of the way; they had walked so many miles on the previous day and her feet were so tender. After trying to manoeuvre the machine’s stiffened joints, riding on flat tyres and, much to Rosita’s amusement, falling off several times, Barbara decided walking was safer.

The day was spent dealing with the Careys’ customers and arranging for the following day’s selling at the usual pitch. Barbara succeeded in collecting some of the money owned to the mild-mannered man who was too kindly to insist he was paid – putting others before his own family, she
thought, with mild irritation. She hid it in the house for when the family returned.

Days passed and Barbara wrote to Graham, telling him she would be home when she had found a place to leave her daughter. She had no fear of Graham coming to look for them: with no help apart from Kate and Hattie, who were only two and three, he was unable to leave the farm.

Although she was unsure how infections like diphtheria were carried, she knew the symptoms that had appeared regularly in the neighbours during her childhood. As a precaution she kept Rosita away from the house on the beach and every morning she examined the girl for signs of the disease. She asked repeatedly if she had a sore throat, looked in her mouth, felt her glands. Each night, as she put her to sleep in Luke’s bed, she sighed with relief that so far Rosita continued to remain healthy.

It was Sunday morning when she went to find her mother and father. Surely now they could forgive her and help their granddaughter? She didn’t even reach the house. On a corner she met her father and he stared at her, first in surprise then in anger.

‘I hope you aren’t planning to visit your mother?’

‘Yes. I’m sure she’d like to meet her granddaughter.’

‘That’s her, is it? Well, you can take it from me there’s no welcome for either of you.’

‘Who was that, Mam?’ Rosita asked as her mother pulled her away. She glanced up and saw tears of disappointment and fury in her mother’s eyes so decided not to repeat the question. ‘I’m hungry. Can we have something to eat?’ she said instead.

Richard and his father were the first to arrive home, pale and even thinner than normal after the fever that had weakened them. They were very pleased to see Barbara and hear what she had been doing.

‘Saved the business, you have, my girl, and I don’t know how to thank you,’ Henry Carey said.

Richard stared at Rosita. ‘Run away from the old man, have you?’

‘We broke into someone’s house and we’re living there as if it’s ours! Mam just smashed the door down!’ Rosita was wide-eyed as she told how her mother had broken the lock.

‘She never did!’

‘Come and see.’ Rosita led him to where Luke’s cottage stood and was surprised to see that the padlock had been replaced. Someone had been there while they were delivering the evening papers. Their few belongings had been thrown outside. Unperturbed, Rosita said, ‘Mam’ll have to smash the lock again, but it won’t take her long.’

They walked along the beach and Richard showed her Luke’s boat.

‘Is he my dad?’ she asked. ‘The man with the beard and funny glasses?’

‘I don’t think so. Pity, mind. If he was he wouldn’t slap you around like your old man does.’

‘Who is my real dad?’

‘I don’t know but I think he’s dead. But I do know who your
grandparents
are. I heard Barbara and Mam talking about them. Useless they are, the lot of them, so Mam says.’

When he told her their names she asked him to write them down. The piece of paper he found and the blunt pencil didn’t make the document seem very important, but Rosita put it carefully in her clothes, tucked away in her only possession, a book.

It was
A Child’s Garden of Verses
by Robert Louis Stevenson. She and her sisters loved their mother to read from it. Rosita’s favourite was ‘The Lamplighter’. Living on a farm, far from any street, the idea of someone coming along each evening to light lamps was a magical thing. She found the page with the aid of the pictures and tucked the piece of paper into the fold.

Freda, Barbara’s sister, was surprised to see Barbara and Rosita waiting for her when she came out of work on Saturday evening. It was late as the shop stayed open for longer on Saturdays and at first she didn’t recognize them.

‘Barbara? Where did you spring from? And is this your little girl? Have you seen Mam?’ She was obviously pleased to see them and Barbara was warmed by her smile of pleasure.

‘I haven’t seen Mam but I met Dad and he told us to stay away. I – I wondered if you could talk to them? I need somewhere to leave Rosita for a while, just until I can get a few things sorted.’

‘Come and have a cup of tea and a bun and we’ll talk.’

Barbara knew immediately from the closed-up look on her sister’s face that it was hopeless but she went anyway. It was good to see Freda again, and to gather news of her family would be some small comfort.

‘I’ll do what I can, but our dad is very stubborn, as you know,’ Freda said when they were about to part. ‘If Mam says yes, then I’ll come to the beach and find you. If you don’t hear anything, well, Barbara, I promise I’ll have tried.’

‘There isn’t anyone else and I have to get back to the farm. I have two other children and a husband who need me. I can’t leave them much longer.’

Every morning, Barbara left one of the Carey children sitting on a chair near the open door, looking out for Freda. Each day, when she returned with Richard and Mr Carey, there was no news. On Sunday, after the morning papers were dealt with, the day was free. She watched the road almost afraid to turn her head in case she missed that first glimpse of her sister, a promise of help, but the morning passed and no one came. Freda might have tried but she had certainly failed.

Mr Carey sat in the weak October sunshine chewing the end of his pencil and filling in pages of his books. Mrs Carey and Barbara were washing clothes and spreading them on bushes and on the sea wall to dry. Richard and Rosita were out in the boat, hoping for some fish.

Barbara was determinedly not looking along the road, so when the woman appeared it was with a lurch of disbelief that she saw someone approaching. Hope was there for a brief moment then dashed. It wasn’t her sister or her mother. It was Bernard’s mother, Mrs Stock.

‘Mr Stock and I will take the girl,’ she said without preamble. ‘Your sister told me how she was ill treated. She’ll have a good, respectable home with us.’

Barbara’s instincts were to refuse but how could she? The Careys were hardly able to care for themselves and were certainly not fit to cope with a lively character like Rosita. And Rosita could not go back to the farm. There were other children waiting for her and wondering why she had abandoned them. She missed Kate and Hattie. Whatever happened, she had to go back to them, just as definitely as Rosita could not. Reluctantly, she walked with a frightened Rosita to the neat, dark little house of Mr and Mrs Stock.

Rosita began to misbehave immediately.

‘Is this all there is?’ she asked when she had been shown around.

‘Better than you’re used to,’ Mrs Stock replied stiffly.

‘Pigsties better than this we’ve got! And where are the fields?’

‘There aren’t any fields, child. There’s a yard for you to play in.’

‘Where?’ Rosita demanded, ignoring the shushing of her mother.

‘Outside the back door, of course.’

‘Call that a yard? The dog couldn’t turn round in that little space!’

Barbara left her with strong misgivings. She didn’t look back as the bus took her further and further away from her daughter. Before she reached the farm to a jubilant welcome from the girls and an anxious, almost formal greeting from Graham, Rosita had run away.

Three times Mr and Mrs Stock took Rosita back from the Careys, then Barbara came again, collected the wildly furious and frightened child and placed her in a home for waifs and strays.

‘Her father died in the war and her mother has gone away,’ Barbara told the kindly matron. ‘To Scotland I believe. I’m her Auntie Babs,’ she explained, adding to the confusion of the unhappy Rosita.

Rosita glared around her, staring at the other girls who had come to watch her arrival. She wasn’t going to cry, she wasn’t. This was punishment, being locked away in this huge building, but she wouldn’t shed a single tear. She wondered what she had done to be punished in this way. It must have been something very wicked for Mam to pretend she was an auntie.

Refusing to hold her mother’s hand, Rosita followed the two women as they went from room to room in the enormous building. The matron was dressed in a long, blue and white striped dress, over which she wore a white apron and matching cap. She rustled as she walked and her strong shoes clacked importantly on the bare tiled floors.

Rosita was too distressed to take in much of what they were shown but the rooms seemed frightening. Sounds echoed hollowly. The floors were cold tiles downstairs and mostly bare scrubbed wooden boards above. The place was larger than any she had ever seen, the walls a chilly white and so high she thought they must have been whitewashed barns like on the farm and been piled one on another to make this strange house.

Everything was in rows. Rows of bowls for washing, each with its bar of soap and a towel, rows of lavatories, rows of chairs against long scrubbed tables and rows of beds. She saw several girls who, with their matching dresses and coverall aprons and very short hair, looked as strange as the house. They too seemed to always be standing in rows or walking single file, as if unable to break the pattern.

Then, their tour of inspection was over and she was standing at the doorway and watching her mother leave. She began to scream but the woman dressed in grey who was now in charge of her whispered that if she didn’t stop immediately she would be locked in the punishment room. Rosita poked her tongue out at her but remained silent.

Stifling her screams with her hand, Rosita stared after the figure of her mother hurrying down the road and she shook inside. What was happening to her? Why was Mam pretending to be an auntie? She only had one auntie and that was Auntie Molly Carey. She’d better get back to her as soon as possible before this huge house, filled with strange people, swallowed her completely.

Getting up early was no problem for Rosita, who was used to farm life. In fact, she was awake long before the other girls who shared her room and she lay watching the sky through a high window and planning her escape. She wanted to run away immediately – she had wet the bed and didn’t know who to tell.

At 7.30 they were roused and like the others, Rosita pulled the covers from her bed, remade it and pulled the covers back for airing. She did it quickly, her small arms stretching across the damp sheet and bundling it so no one knew of her shame. Then she followed the other girls to the room with the row of bowls for washing and was late getting to breakfast and everyone stared. Tomorrow, she decided grimly, I’ll use my elbows and make sure I’m first!

She wasn’t hungry and the meal of bread and milk didn’t appeal, but she ate some anyway and tucked the rest into the pocket on the leg of her knickers. She had to be ready for the opportunity to run, whenever it came.

She didn’t go to school on that first day. The grey lady said it was to give her a chance to settle. She sat with the younger children, who were taught by those who had left school. On the second day she walked, in crocodile, with the rest. Biggest at the front, smallest behind, all wearing identical clothes, heavy boots making them look like a centipede.