Rosie (15 page)

Rosie opened her mouth to say that she didn’t see recognizing the difference between a teaspoon and a jam spoon as being vital to her education, or that living with the Bentleys was a valuable experience. But a look in Thomas’s eyes made her bite it back. All at once she realized he truly understood what she was going through, and that could only be because he’d been on a similar road to her once or twice in his life. She thought it was amazing he wasn’t bitter about his missing leg; even more astounding he had a big enough heart to meet the daughter of the man suspected of killing his sister.

‘Got any ideas about what job I could do then?’ she asked instead with a flash of her old cheeky grin. ‘All I can do is cook and clean.’

‘I was in much the same boat as you after the war,’ Thomas said. ‘I didn’t have any real skills, all I knew was meat portering in Smithfield market, before I became a soldier, and I couldn’t go back to humping sides of meat, not with only one leg. I was beginning to despair, but then someone told me about government training schemes especially for ex-servicemen. You could do all sorts – bricklaying, plumbing, carpentry – but I chose clock and watch mending because it meant I could sit down.’

‘Do you like it?’ Rosie asked. Somehow she couldn’t see him crouched over a work bench doing something fiddly; despite his disability he still looked the outdoor sort.

‘Yes, I do,’ he said after a moment’s thought. ‘It’s quite engrossing. And I get to live in Hampstead which is one of the best areas in London. Mostly I think myself pretty lucky. But getting back to you, is there any kind of job you especially fancy?’

‘I’d like to be a nurse,’ she admitted. This idea had come to her in hospital after her chats with Sister Dowd. ‘But you have to be eighteen for that and I’m not sure I can bear the Bentleys for another two years.’

‘Stay with them until your dad’s trial is over and you’re sixteen,’ Thomas suggested. ‘Make sure you work hard enough and smile sweetly so they give you a good reference, then find another job, maybe in a boarding school or nursing home, until you are old enough.’

Rosie dropped her eyes to the table. She really liked this man. She wished she knew how to show her gratitude towards him. But she didn’t know where to begin.

‘You are a very nice man,’ she said eventually, a blush staining her cheeks.

Thomas reached across the table to put his hand over one of hers. ‘And you are very brave, Rosie.’

Her eyes prickled. ‘Thank you, Thomas,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘But I ought to go now.’ She saw by the clock above the door that it was already ten to five. ‘It’s a long walk back to Kingsdown and Mrs Bentley told me to be back by half-past.’

She got up, kissed him shyly on the cheek and was gone in a flash. Thomas limped to the refreshment room door, reaching it just in time to see her handing her platform ticket to the guard at the barrier. From a distance she looked what he was, a skinny child, yet all the time he’d been with her he’d had the sense he’d been in the company of an adult.

Sitting down again Thomas felt suddenly very tired. Travelling down from Paddington yesterday, a night in a cheap boarding house, and just a few hours with Alan – if it hadn’t been for Rosie, he might have thought the trip was a waste of time, money and energy.

The glowing picture he’d painted for Rosie of Alan’s happiness with Mr and Mrs Hughes was an accurate one. But he hadn’t been able to tell her that he viewed it as an awkward stranger, there under sufferance. Alan had barely looked at him, he’d been too busy with his tricycle and a wooden train.

Thomas was very aware that people didn’t know what to make of him. He had been described in the past few years as dour, sober, lugubrious, humourless, a loner, mysterious and standoffish. In fact he was really none of these things, except perhaps a loner, and he wasn’t that by choice, only circumstance. If he didn’t talk, laugh and go out of his way to make friends it was because he was constantly aware of all those he had lost.

He was just like any other eighteen-year-old recruit when he joined the Royal Fusiliers in 1940, a fun-loving lad looking for adventure, who until then had spent his spare time hanging around street corners with his mates, watching the girls or playing football. He was thrown in at the deep end in war the moment his basic training was over. His regiment was sent to Dunkirk to fight in a rear-guard action. He saw two good friends killed, just a few yards from him, but there was no chance to run to them, not even time to shed a tear on their behalf. He grew up fast in France.

To be sent to Singapore early in 1941, when so many other regiments were being sent to North Africa, appeared to be a cushy number. The Japanese weren’t there then and it was thought that if and when they did come, it would be from the south and the great naval guns were trained that way in readiness. For Thomas’s regiment it was a time of comparative ease; there was plenty of food, fun to be had with pretty girls in the many bars, swimming in the warm sea, and a whole new country and culture to be explored.

But the designers of the great guns were wrong and the Japanese surprised everyone by approaching from the north through Malaya. The guns were useless in Singapore’s defence and she fell in February of 1942. Thomas was one of thousands of men rounded up and herded into Changi gaol. Later he was moved on to Burma to build roads. The journey, part train, mostly forced route march with little food or water, claimed many lives. But the deaths on that endless march were nothing compared to the later daily death toll in the camp.

Thomas was asked on liberation why he thought he’d survived having fallen prey to dysentery, tropical ulcers and malaria. He had laughingly claimed it was cussedness, that he felt he was too young to die in some sweaty jungle when he knew so little. He’d admitted he’d spent most of his imprisonment planning his exploration of the rest of the world, imagining all the women he would love, all the delicious meals he would eat, all the sights he would see.

After they amputated his ulcerated leg, however, he found his mind could no longer construct those cheering images which had sustained him so well in the camp. It stayed stubbornly on those friends who had died. Dozens and dozens of them, their gaunt faces like some grim frieze along the walls of the ward. He even felt sorry he’d managed to survive and he began to avoid contact with people.

Solitude became a habit once he left the hospital and took up a place in an ex-servicemen’s hostel. Girls often made eyes at him, other men tried to get him to join them at the pub. But he didn’t want to make friends for fear they insisted on questioning him about his experiences during the war. He certainly could not even think of making love to a woman now he was crippled. So without really being aware of it, he built an invisible wall around himself that no one could breach.

But when he discovered Heather had gone to Somerset, part of the wall collapsed. Eight weeks ago he had set off joyfully to find her. For the first time in years he was aware of others, even interested enough to speak to them. Good pictures came back into his mind as the train chugged westwards, pictures of his childhood in Poplar, of school friends and indeed of his old ambitions to become a famous artist.

Yet just a few days later on his return to London, his mind could barely stand the conflicting emotions he felt. Rage at his own suspicion that Cole Parker might have killed his sister. Tenderness for the small motherless boy he had only glimpsed briefly. Anxiety that Alan was being ill treated, and impotence too that he could do nothing about anything himself. But yet as demented and angry as he felt, it was good to feel
something
again. He’d lived in a vacuum for so many years, he had feared he was incapable of feeling much ever again. Then he got word from the Bridgwater police that they had taken Alan into care, and all at once he felt a strong sense of real purpose.

A man needed something more in his life than just his work. Alan needed a home. Thomas found himself thinking about where he could put a bed for the boy in his tiny flat, considering how he would plan his day with a child to look after.

When the police found the two women’s bodies, it hadn’t come as a real surprise, as he’d been convinced almost from the start that Parker had killed them. But the news of Rosie being in hospital following a severe beating from her older brother had floored him. It was almost as bad as the grief he felt for Heather. He felt deeply responsible because it was all connected to his visit to the police. He couldn’t forget either that it was Rosie who had had the courage and initiative to get Alan to safety, without any thought for her own, while he was still thinking about what to do next.

A voice of reason had begun to speak in the last couple of weeks, since he’d learned that Alan was safe and well cared for. He’d realized that a mere blood tie didn’t mean he was qualified to become father and mother overnight.

He had been puzzled that the boy had shown no interest in the fact that Thomas was meeting Rosie on his way home. He didn’t ask one question about her, or even send a message. In private Mrs Hughes admitted that he had stopped talking about her just a few days after his arrival, and that perhaps he had chosen to block out all memories of May Cottage, good and bad.

Small children were remarkably resilient, Thomas couldn’t help thinking.

It seemed ironic that while he and Rosie needed someone in their lives, the child who was the tenuous bond between them didn’t appear to need either of them. But then life was full of irony, and few people got what they deserved, or needed.

‘Rosie, we don’t put our knife in the jam pot,’ Mrs Bentley said sharply. ‘You must use the spoon! Put a little on the side of your plate, then spread it on your bread.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Rosie replied. She privately thought her way of doing it was a lot less messy and saved washing up another spoon.

She wished she’d described Mrs Bentley to Thomas. She thought he might have found it funny how everything about her was kept firmly in place. Smiles were strictly controlled, for church and visitors, and her conversation was stilted. Even her elbows seemed to be attached to her sides. The only time Rosie had seen them move from that position was when she gave her a lesson in hanging out washing
her way.

Rosie knew she must be about fifty because she had once mentioned watching a parade of men going off to the First World War when she was Rosie’s age. Her face was still unlined, but she wheezed and held her sides walking up the stairs. She couldn’t imagine Mrs Bentley as a young girl. But she liked to imagine how she might be after she’d drunk a couple of pints of cider. That might loosen her up!

Mr Bentley was as silent today as he always was. In fact when she thought about it, the most he’d ever said to her was on her first day here. He had cleared his throat and mumbled something about ‘her unfortunate circumstances’, then said if she needed anything she was to ask, and to remember to say her prayers each night. Another time he had nervously asked, out of his wife’s hearing, if she wished to visit her father and brother in prison, because if so he would arrange it. He looked very relieved when she said she didn’t.

Rosie remembered his smile today though; it had given her the idea that outside his home Mr Bentley might be quite different.

‘Rosie! Sit up straight at the table.’ Mrs Bentley gave her a poke in the spine through the back of the chair. ‘And cut that slice of bread in half before you attempt to eat it!’

Rosie sighed inwardly. She was so hungry she could eat the entire plate of thinly cut bread and butter. By the time she’d played around dolloping the jam on the plate, then spreading it on the bread and cutting it, it was hardly worth the effort, one mouthful and it was gone.

The dining-room was as depressing as Mrs Bentley. Even on the warmest days it was cold and inhospitable. The chairs seemed designed to make sure no one lingered on them. Horsehair prickled her legs, and the knobbly bits on the carved backs dug into her spine. The room overlooked the street, and the wallpaper was a sombre brown, made even more dismal by many pictures with dreary scenes from the Bible. ‘Salome’, with John the Baptist’s severed head on a silver salver, seemed a very odd choice of picture for a dining-room. It made her shudder.

Mrs Bentley cut the fruit cake and looked at Rosie as if she’d finally decided it was time for conversation. ‘Now, my dear,’ she said starchily. ‘How did your meeting go with Mr Farley?’

Mr Bentley looked at Rosie too with the politely interested expression he always put on when a conversation was being held in his presence. Rosie wondered if he listened, or was his mind a million miles away?

‘It was nice to see him again,’ Rosie said. ‘He looked tired, it had been a long journey for him. Did I tell you he’s got an artificial leg? They sawed off his own one when he was a prisoner of war.’

‘Limb
is a much politer way of referring to a leg, my dear,’ Mrs Bentley corrected her. ‘And we don’t mention such things as amputation at mealtimes.’

Rosie couldn’t see what was offensive about the word ‘leg’. Or indeed why she shouldn’t mention it being sawn off, when there was John the Baptist’s severed head right above them. But now she had Mrs Bentley’s attention she was happy to launch into an enthusiastic account of how happy and settled Alan was, including the details of the tricycle and train set.

‘Well, that is good news. Isn’t it, Herbert?’ Mrs Bentley said to her husband as Rosie came to a halt.

‘Very good, my dear,’ he replied, helping himself to a slice of fruit cake.

‘Well, now we know your little brother is happy and safe, we must think about your future,’ Mrs Bentley said, fixing Rosie with her cold watery-blue eyes. ‘We’re very happy to have you here of course, for the time being, but it isn’t exactly ideal for any of us.’

The truth of the matter was that Edith Bentley found Rosie disconcerting. She worked hard enough, faster and better than a woman twice her age. But it was her bold manner which upset Edith. She had fully expected a child in her position to be so ashamed of what her father had done that she couldn’t look anyone in the eye. Instead she asked questions, stared at people openly and quite often looked as if she expected to be liked.