Rosie (2 page)

Looking across at Heather from the safety of her father’s arms, Rosie decided the girl would make a change from talking to chickens, spiders and birds. She looked and sounded jolly, and she was young enough to be a big sister. So after only a moment’s hesitation she slid down from her father’s arms and walked over to her. ‘ ’Lo, Heather,’ she said, blushing a little. ‘D’you wanna see the house and have a cup of tea?’

‘Not’alf,’ replied Heather as she took Rosie’s hand and squeezed it with real warmth. ‘I feel like me throat’s been cut I’m that thirsty.’

Leaving her father to follow with Heather’s bag, Rosie led her through the maze of junk round to the back yard and into the kitchen.

Heather gasped as she stepped over the threshold and stopped dead. Rosie couldn’t imagine why the kitchen evoked such a response, the dishes were all washed. Maybe she didn’t like chickens?

Grabbing the brown hen which was pecking at a loaf left on the kitchen table, Rosie flung it out of the door and turned back to Heather. ‘They’re not supposed to come indoors. But that one’s a bit saucy. Did he scare you?’

Today was the first time Heather Farley had ever been out of London, and she’d been enchanted at the sight of fields, rivers and wild flowers. She hadn’t been the least bit put off by the dilapidated outside of May Cottage, nor the piles of junk around it, because on the long drive down here Cole had explained he made his living from scrap metal. Besides, compared with bomb-damaged, dirty London houses it looked pretty enough to her.

But her first glimpse of the kitchen stunned her. She had never ever before witnessed such filth, and she’d been brought up in the slums of Poplar, and seen sights that would make most people turn green. On top of the dirt it was blazing hot from a kitchen range, and it stunk worse than an abattoir.

It was a large room with a low-beamed ceiling, and its furniture – a dresser, a large chest of drawers, central table and chairs – had probably been brought here at the time the house was built. Everything was covered in a thick film of grease, there were chicken droppings on every surface, and greasy cobwebs hung from the beams. The stone floor could not have been swept in weeks, let alone scrubbed, and the windows were so dirt-encrusted it was difficult to see through them.

‘No, I ain’t scared of the chicken,’ Heather said slowly. She guessed this child didn’t get invited into other people’s homes very often and she probably had no idea what a clean house looked like. ‘It’s just so ‘ot in ‘ere it gave me a turn for the moment.’ She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand to illustrate this point.

‘I lit the stove ‘cos Dad was coming home,’ Rosie explained. ‘I thought he’d want sommat hot to eat, and a bath, after London.’

Cole stepped into the kitchen, his towering frame blocking out the light from the doorway. ‘You did right to light it, Rosie,’ he said. ‘We’ll be needing lots of hot water tonight.’

Rosie sensed that Heather was shocked and disappointed, whatever she said. But her father’s expression and behaviour puzzled her still more. He looked almost cowed and he was shuffling from one foot to the other as if he were embarrassed. She had never seen him like that before.

‘Rosie does her best, but she’s only a babby,’ Cole continued. ‘Me boys are lazy buggers an’ all, can’t get’m to do a hand’s turn without a stick to their backs. Where’re they too, Rosie?’

‘Gone to Bridgwater on the motorbike,’ Rosie replied, hoping he wouldn’t grill her about what they’d done every day since he’d been gone. If he discovered the truth he’d lay into the boys with his belt the second they walked through the door. And Seth would round on her later in retaliation. ‘I’ll just fill up the kettle,’ she added and grabbing it quickly, scuttled past her father out into the yard to fill it from the pump.

Over the splashing of the water from the pump Rosie couldn’t hear what Heather and Cole were saying in her absence, but she had a creeping feeling it wasn’t happy chat. So it was a surprise when she walked back into the kitchen with the kettle to find Heather bending over by the range, twiddling the tap on one side experimentally. Furthermore she had tied her hair back with a ribbon and put on an apron.

‘So there’s ‘ot water, that’s sommat,’ she stood up, putting her hands on her hips. ‘This place needs a good bottoming, and something stinks an’ all, so you two ‘ad better clear off and get some grub and cleaning stuff in, while I do it. Never mind the tea. I’ll make do with water.’

Rosie looked to her father expecting him to say something sharp. He didn’t like bossy women. But to her surprise he took the kettle from Rosie’s hands and placed it on the hotplate.

‘I didn’t mean you to start working today, Heather.’

‘Well, I can’t sit about in this midden,’ Heather laughed and the sound rang out around the gloomy kitchen. ‘And you’ll be wanting a meal soon too. So let me get cracking.’

Rosie wondered what a ‘midden’ was, but she had a feeling it was better not to ask, so she followed her father out to the truck without another word.

Once Cole and Rosie had gone, Heather stood in the middle of the kitchen and sniffed. The foul smell was strongest away from the range, but it was a minute or two before she realized that the open back door, in fact, concealed another door, and it was from behind this that the stink was coming.

Holding her nose, she pulled it open, jumping back in horror as a dozen fat bluebottles came shooting out like fighter planes. There, on a shelf, was the source of the smell: a piece of meat left so long on a tin plate that it was alive with wriggling maggots. She gagged, slammed the door shut again and ran out the back door for fresh air.

Heather Farley was a little slow, in so much as she had never quite mastered reading and writing. But what she lacked in education she made up for in common sense. As she filled her lungs again with sweet-smelling air, she took stock of her situation.

The rest of the house was probably even worse than the kitchen. The little girl Rosie looked like a tinker’s kid; she might even have lice. It had to be at least two miles to the nearest house; it didn’t bear thinking about how far it was to the closest town. She was a city girl and she didn’t know the first thing about country life. It was only today that she’d seen her first cow. How could she even think of staying here?

On the other hand she was a hundred miles from London and she had nothing but a few shillings in her purse. Besides, it wasn’t as if she had anyone or anywhere to run to! In any case Cole Parker hadn’t lied to her. He’d said again and again that his cottage had no modern conveniences, and that he and his boys couldn’t cope with looking after it alone.

But, above all, there was the little girl. Heather smiled to herself as she remembered how rough Rosie’s hand had felt in hers. She seemed a nice little thing, even if she was filthy, and she needed someone to look after her. Wasn’t that good enough reason to stay?

Heather lifted her face to the sun and the warmth on her skin felt good. She had never been anywhere so tranquil before – all she could hear was the buzzing of bees and the hens clucking in the orchard. The utter peace boosted her determination. She’d spent the whole war dreaming of living in the country. Well, she was here now, even if this cottage was a tip. ‘So you’d better get cracking,’ she said aloud, and went back to the kitchen.

She scooped the rotten meat on to a newspaper while holding her nose. Once that was dealt with, she stacked every piece of china, each pot and ornament on the table, and took all the chairs outside. Then filling a bucket with hot water from the stove, she picked up a bar of yellow soap and began to scrub the walls and shelves.

Heather Farley was only two, her brother Thomas seven, in 1929 when their father died from tuberculosis. Home was two rooms in a tenement building in Poplar. They shared a tap and lavatory with four other families. Rats and mice played on the stairs – to leave food uncovered for just a second or two was to lose it. But Maud Farley, their mother, had been a proud woman. She didn’t sit and cry about her misfortune but went out and found cleaning jobs to keep her family from starving. Heather supposed it had been a tough childhood, but yet she had nothing but happy memories, with Thomas at the centre of all of them. He had looked after her when their mother was working, taken her to school, played with her and protected her. Other children sometimes jeered at her because she was a dunce, but Thomas never did. All she could remember was him praising her for her sewing, cooking and cleaning.

When war broke out in 1939, Thomas had been working in Smithfield Market for three years. He was very much the man of the house. Heather could remember crying because Thomas said he was going to join up as soon as he was eighteen and she didn’t think she could live without him.

But she did learn to live without him, and her mother too. Thomas joined up in 1940 and was sent overseas almost immediately. In October of the same year before Heather was even thirteen, her mother was killed in an air raid on her way home from work, while Heather was waiting for her down in the shelter.

Neighbours often said that Heather was from the same mould as Maud. As devastated as she was, she stayed in their home, took over her mother’s two cleaning jobs and just carried on, ignoring the bombs, dismissing the idea that she too might be killed, just waiting for the day when her brother would come home on leave and tell her what to do next. But Thomas never came home, he was in the Far East somewhere. Heather got a neighbour to read his infrequent letters out to her and dictated cheerful letters back. Then just as she thought nothing worse could happen, in January of 1942 their tenement building took a direct hit, reducing it to a heap of rubble.

She had been fourteen then. She took a job as laundry assistant in Whitechapel Hospital and found a tiny room in Bethnal Green. In February of that year she heard the news that Singapore had fallen, but she didn’t know definitely if that was where Thomas was and anyway all the post from the Far East took a long time to get through.

The year had worn on, but still with no word from Thomas, Heather had become increasingly worried. The last letter she had received from him arrived just days before the flats were bombed. She made inquiries at the post office to see what they did with mail arriving for an address which no longer existed and they assured her they kept it till it was claimed. Other people urged her to keep sending letters to Thomas; they said the army and Red Cross worked together to make sure men got their mail, wherever they were, but still she heard nothing. Not even one of those brief notes to inform her that her brother had been taken prisoner. She felt deep inside that Thomas must be dead; he had always been so conscientious and resourceful, she was sure he would have found some way to let her know he was safe.

Finally a kindly priest investigated for her. The information she eventually received in 1944, over two years after Thomas’s last letter, was the worst and most bitter blow she’d ever been dealt. Thomas Farley had gone missing when Singapore fell and as they had no record of him in any prison camp, he was presumed dead.

Heather had always been a buoyant and optimistic girl but this news wiped her out. There seemed to be no point in anything then; she had nothing to look forward to, no one to care for, or to care about her. It was only in January of 1945 that she managed to pull herself together enough to leave the laundry and find a new job in a cafeteria in Piccadilly. This was where she had met Cole Parker.

It was in late April, just a couple of weeks after her eighteenth birthday. Everyone in London was in a state of excitement anticipating that victory would be declared at any time. The pubs and clubs were getting in stocks of beer and spirits for the celebrations, the tube stations were finally closed as bomb shelters and men loaded up trucks with mountains of obsolete sandbags. Heather had found the excitement to be infectious. She trimmed her hair, put on some lipstick and even began to feel a stirring of her old optimism.

The cafeteria had been very busy that day, not just at lunch time, but all day. As fast as she cleared the tables, more people came in and filled them again.

At about four in the afternoon she saw the big dark-haired man standing with a tray of food, unable to find a seat, and she hurried over to him, directing him to a corner table that she’d just cleared.

He seemed to want to talk, asking her for directions to Victoria, where he said he had to pick up some goods. Heather always talked willingly to everyone, but it was the man’s rolling, country accent which struck her more than his conversation. She’d never heard anything like it before. He told her he came from Somerset and he teased her about her cockney accent too.

He was still there when it was time for her to have a break, and on an impulse she joined him at his table. That was when he told her how his wife had been killed two years earlier when she’d come up to London for a visit. He said his boys, Seth and Norman, were old enough to fend for themselves, but that his little girl Rosie was only eight and he worried about her growing up without a woman’s influence.

He said he’d tried to find a housekeeper, but joked that no one would stay once they saw the state of his cottage. Heather’s heart went out to him and his little girl.

The wild celebrations on Victory Day and the turmoil in the days that followed put the man out of her mind. She certainly never expected to see him again. But one afternoon almost three weeks after they’d first met, he came back to the cafeteria, and this time it was clear he’d come especially to find her. He asked if they could meet up when she’d finished work, and although all the other waitresses said he looked a bit dangerous, she agreed to go.

He took her to the White Bear on Piccadilly, packed full of servicemen, and he told her so much more about his home and family.

‘Seth’s a bugger,’ he said with a grin. ‘Just like me at the same age. It’ll do him good when he’s called up for his National Service later this year, put some discipline into him. Norman’s not much better, but as thick as a plank. Rosie’s a bright little thing though. Always reading and asking questions. She deserves better.’