Rosie

Synopsis

Will Rosie ever escape from her brutal brothers? As a child Rosie Parker spent the war years battling her brutish half-brothers Seth and Norman on the farm under the less-than-watchful eye of her father Cole. But when housekeeper Heather Farley arrives, Rosie finds a mother – and a friend – to look after her. Several years later, Thomas Farley comes to find his sister. Rosie can only tell him that she disappeared in mysterious circumstances, abandoning her small son Alan. Determined to get young Alan and Rosie out of the clutches of Cole and his sons, Thomas helps unearth a terrible truth about the family. A truth that forces Rosie away from the farm and out into a cruel world where she must somehow come to terms with her shocking past. Is it possible that the man who brought ruin on her family might also bring happiness to Rosie?

LESLEY PEARSE

Rosie

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

To Peter, Lucy, Sammy and Jo, with love

Chapter One

Somerset, 1945

The privy stunk worse than usual because of the heat, so Rosie pulled her knickers down out in the orchard, before opening the rickety door. Then, holding her nose with one hand and her dress up with the other, she backed in, that way avoiding seeing the fetid, bottomless hole.

A large brown spider weaving a web from one of the beams to a crack in the door swung past her right cheek. Rosie laughed. She considered all living creatures as friends, even the less attractive ones.

‘Hullo, Syd,’ she said in nasal tones, because she had to hold on to her nose. ‘Why d’you stay in this smelly place? You could catch just as many flies if you made your web on one of the apple trees, and you’d have a nice view of the moors too!’

Rosie’s home, May Cottage, was at the heart of the Somerset Levels, a low-lying area of fertile moorland crisscrossed with rivers and man-made rhynes. For some, such an isolated place, however lovely, would be daunting, especially if they were forced to be entirely alone here as often as Rosie was. But she didn’t mind, not even when darkness fell. To her, each snuffling, barking, squeaking or grunting sound was the voice of a friend, whether it be rabbit, bird, bullfrog or hedgehog. They didn’t gossip or turn up their noses about the Parkers, unlike the people in Catcott village further up the road.

The male Parkers intrigued, horrified, frightened and yet somehow excited their neighbours. Cole Parker, Rosie’s father, often remarked that if it wasn’t for him there would be no conversation in the Crown. He claimed too that they were jealous of him. There was an element of truth in this: Cole was a handsome man and had a way with the ladies. He also had the luck of the Devil. Somehow he’d managed to convince the conscription board he was unfit for active service, then spent the war years making good money out of it. But behind the envy was fear too; mysterious accidents seemed to befall people who spoke too volubly about the Parkers, especially those who dared say that Cole’s lads weren’t just wild, but twisted, and twice as dangerous as their father.

As the war slowly creaked towards its end, however, even the people of Catcott had found something more to talk about than the Parkers. The men were expected home, rationing and the blackout would soon be just a distant memory. There were frantic preparations for the victory celebrations: chickens and pigs to be fattened, hoarded sugar, flour and currants dug out for cakes. Spring cleaning took on a new fervour, and in the village school there was a rash of compositions handed in based on childish sweet-toothed fantasies of a world where chocolate bars hung on trees, rivers flowed with lemonade and streets were paved with fruit gums.

In the drunken revelry of the village Victory Party there had been a conviction that a wonderful new era was just dawning. But now in June, just one month later, that vision was already tarnished. Many servicemen were still overseas, and of those who had come home a great number were finding it hard to adjust to family life. Rationing was worse than ever and shortages of paint, bricks and building materials prevented city dwellers from repairing the war damage to their houses.

Rosie was more aware of how it was for families in the big cities than any of her school friends, because her father often went to Bristol and London, fixing up deals to clear bomb sites. When she felt a little lonely, afraid or hungry she tried to remember stories her dad had told her about poor, skinny kids he’d seen scavenging wood and coal. In big cities they didn’t get the odd rabbit or duck to supplement their meat rationing like they did down here. They went hungry.

Cole was in London now. At least he was on his way back after a three-day stay. He’d left Rosie in the care of her brothers. But Seth was seventeen, Norman sixteen and they had a great many better things to do while their father was away than to play nursemaid to an eight-year-old. So their little sister’s curly, coppery hair hadn’t seen a comb in days. Her bare feet and knees were ingrained with dirt, her dress so tattered it was only fit for the rag-bag, yet despite these clear signs of neglect, Rosie looked robustly healthy, if a little small for her age. She also had a remarkable air of happy self-assurance, even here in such undignified surroundings.

A familiar distant rattling, rumbling sound made Rosie forget the spider and run out to the orchard, pulling her knickers up as she went. Jumping up on the log pile beside the chicken house, she peered across the moorland in the direction of Burtle. The shimmering heat and tall grasses growing along the rhynes and ditches prevented her from seeing if the approaching vehicle was definitely her father’s pickup truck. But it was unlikely to be anyone else’s; few trucks, indeed motor vehicles of any kind, came to this part of the Somerset Levels.

Despite the beauty of the surrounding flower-speckled moors, May Cottage, the Parker home, was not the picturesque chocolate box cottage its name suggested. It was a dilapidated, turn-of-the-century farm labourer’s house, almost concealed by mountains of scrap metal flanking it on both sides. Old tractors, broken-down rusting cars and motorbikes, timber, filing cabinets, bedsteads, worn tyres and ancient farm machinery. Cole Parker saw nothing incongruous in piling such objects in a place where herons and kingfishers fished in the tranquillity of the ditches and rivers. He didn’t see his forest of junk as ugly or grim. It was his living.

As the familiar rust-red cab of the pickup truck came into view, Rosie darted back up the orchard, scattering the hens, and through the side gate from the back yard, skirting round the piles of junk to arrive at the front of the cottage just as her father pulled up with a squeal of brakes.

‘Daddy!’ she yelled in welcome, waving both hands excitedly. She was just about to jump on to the running board, when she realized her father was not alone.

A woman was sitting in the passenger seat beside him. Rosie backed away in fright to the shelter of the overgrown may trees in the front garden.

Cole leapt from the cab, but instead of sweeping her up in his arms for a hug as he usually did when he’d been away for a few days, he stopped short and frowned at her.

‘Come now, Rosie. That’s no way to behave,’ he bellowed at her, his usually slow speech quickened with irritation. ‘Come over here an’ say hullo to Heather; she’s come all the way from London to be a ma to you.’

Rosie stared at her father in stupefaction. Her father had never before encouraged visitors to May Cottage, indeed he’d brought her up to view strangers with suspicion. Now, with no advance warning he had brought home a new mother!

‘Ma, to me?’ she blurted out.

‘That’s right, so give her a welcome.’

Rosie may have been stunned, but she knew better than to show her father up in public. So she took a few reluctant steps forward and forced a smile as the woman climbed down from the cab.

On closer inspection she wasn’t that old, Rosie decided. She wore a crumpled floral dress and her bare legs were mottled as if she’d spent the winter sitting too close to a fire. She was nothing like the women Cole usually went for; there had been several of those over-made-up, brassy ones in the last two years. This one was hefty, with wide hips and a big plain face. The only remarkable thing about her was her hair; it was beautiful, thick, long and butter coloured.

‘ ’Allo,’ she said, her big face breaking into a disarmingly warm smile. ‘I’m ‘Eather Farley, and I’ve ‘eard all about you from yer dad. Don’t be scared of me, luv, we’ll soon be mates.’

Rosie was amazed at the girl’s peculiar accent. ‘Why do you talk so funny?’ she asked, her timidity retreating in the face of curiosity.

‘ ’Cos I’m a cockney, ain’t I?’ the girl laughed. ‘Born in the sound of Bow Bells. We all talk like that. You and yer dad sound real funny to me an’ all!’

Rosie looked into the girl’s warm brown eyes, then back to her father. He was smiling too, one of his rare, real, from-the-heart smiles. She instinctively knew he really liked this girl Heather, and that pleased Rosie because he didn’t take to many people. Although plenty of women took to him.

Even at forty-one his hair was still as thick, black and glossy as it had been when he was eighteen. His body rippled with muscle, even though he had a slight paunch from the quantity of cider he drank daily. Dressed as he was now in his Sunday trousers and boiled white shirt, he was a handsome man. He often spoke laughingly of his mother’s claim that the gypsies must have taken her baby and replaced it with one of theirs, for his strong features and dark skin tone were more Romany than English.

‘Come on now, lass,’ he said to his daughter in a softer voice, catching her up in his arms and hugging her. ‘You’ve been too long without a ma, and Heather’s got no kin. Let’s be givin’ it a go, eh?’