Rosie (31 page)

She told them everything – the lack of stimulation, of Donald being subjected to seeing and hearing disturbing things. She couldn’t quite bring herself to tell the tale Linda had reported, that Archie had been caught once or twice trying to make Donald masturbate him, or that all the girls were a little anxious about what went on in the dormitories after the patients had been locked in for the night. But she said how she wished she could take him out to the shops or on a bus ride, of her certainty that with a little help he could learn a great deal more. Finally she told them how he’d sung ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ and said that he remembered his mother singing it to him.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, as Mrs Cook dabbed her eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you by telling you that. It’s just that he has got a good memory and he’s capable of doing so much more than he gets a chance to do here.’

‘Miss Smith, you are very young,’ Mr Cook said, putting one big hand on her shoulder. ‘You are also disturbingly frank. But we are touched by your concern for our son and very grateful to you for sharing your views with us.’

‘We never wanted to send Donald away,’ Mrs Cook said in a quavering voice. ‘We were coerced into it. People talked about him, blamed him for all sorts of things and we were afraid for him. A year ago Matron said she thought it would be kinder to him if we were not to come so often. She said he was always distressed afterwards. But it hurts us so much to stay away.’

Rosie was tempted to say she was certain this was rubbish, but she knew she’d said too much already. ‘I can’t say anything about that as I wasn’t here last time you visited,’ she said. ‘But if it will make you feel better I could drop you a line in the next day or so and tell you how he was after this visit?’

‘You’d do that?’ Mrs Cook looked very surprised.

‘Only if you promise not to let on to Matron,’ Rosie said. ‘But don’t write back to me, will you, because someone might see the letter.’

The couple looked at one another for a moment. Rosie thought she’d gone too far.

Mr Cook cleared his throat. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, reaching into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and drawing out a card. ‘This is our address and telephone number. Could we impose on you to telephone us sometimes in the evenings, that way we could talk about Donald more easily. You can reverse the charges.’

Rosie had never had any cause to use a telephone. She didn’t have the first idea about how to go about it. But she wasn’t going to admit that. She would find out how to do it.

‘Okay,’ she said, slipping the card into her pocket. ‘But I ought to go now, if that’s all right with you.’

‘Thank you so much.’ Mrs Cook got up and took Rosie’s hand. She didn’t shake it but pressed it between her two hands. ‘We’ll sleep a great deal easier knowing Donald has you as a friend.’

Rosie left them, hurrying out before someone noted how long she’d been speaking with the couple. She glanced at the card, saw an address in Sussex, and put it away in her pocket, reminding herself she would need to tuck that away from both Matron’s and Maureen’s prying eyes.

On Monday evening Rosie made her first telephone call to the Cooks from the telephone box outside the library. She was surprised to find it very easy, and even more astounded to hear Mrs Cook’s voice as if she was just a little further down the street. It was a happy call. Donald had suffered no ill effects from their visit; if anything he was brighter and more contented than he’d been before. Rosie promised she would telephone again next month, unless his parents managed to get up again before that.

As she walked back later to Carrington Hall she saw some girls of her age waiting at a bus stop. They were giggling and pushing one another, excited as if they were going somewhere special. She paused in a shop doorway to watch them, and felt a pang of envy. None of them was any better dressed than she, they were all wearing quite shabby old gabardine school raincoats left open to show off their quite ordinary dresses, but the way they’d made up their faces and curled their hair reminded her that every other sixteen-year-old in London probably knew more about make-up and hairstyles than she did.

As the bus came along Rosie walked on thinking that perhaps it was time she dropped her country-girl look and took up Linda’s and Mary’s offer to take her dancing with them. If nothing else it might take her mind off her father. It might even make the ache inside her a little less, and the future a bit brighter.

She hesitantly broached the subject with Linda and Mary and they gave her no opportunity to back out at the last moment and bought a ticket for her for the dance on the following Saturday at the local parish hall.

‘It won’t be anything to be scared of,’ Linda insisted. ‘There’s always more girls than fellas there and all you can drink is lemonade. But it’s a good place to give you confidence.’

The following evening Linda taught her the rudiments of the waltz, and Mary went through her few clothes to sort out what she would wear.

Rosie couldn’t say she truly enjoyed the dance. The hall looked pretty enough decorated with balloons and streamers, but she felt silly shuffling around the floor with Mary, trying hard to pretend she could really waltz. The girls outnumbered the boys two to one and she felt very old-fashioned in her print summer dress next to the local girls who were all decked out in copies of American fashions with tight sweaters and full skirts. The mascara Linda had insisted she wore made her eyes feel sore and her feet ached in a borrowed pair of Mary’s high heels. But she liked the band. They all wore dark blue jackets and dickey bows and they played after the fashion of Victor Sylvester, which seemed terribly sophisticated. She made up her mind she would learn to dance properly and spend all her wages on some fashionable clothes before she ventured out with them again.

November passed very slowly. Eisenhower won the American presidential elections on the 4th. On the 18th, Jomo Kenyatta was charged as head of the Mau Mau, but though Rosie tried to interest herself in world news, she could see no further ahead than her father’s impending execution. The other girls spoke expectantly of Christmas. Each night in the staff room the sewing machine whirred as Linda made dolls’ clothes for her nieces, and Mary’s knitting needles clicked away as she struggled to finish a cardigan for her mother before her visit to Ireland.

But Rosie had no one she wanted to make a present for. Her father was on her mind from first thing in the morning, until she fell asleep at night, but somehow she had to keep up the pretence of being interested in anything and everyone. There was an appeal, but it was lost, and she was aware that Cole would now be in the condemned cell, watched every minute of the day and night.

Rosie wrote him one last letter, enclosing it with one to Miss Pemberton, asking that she got it to him. She had so much to say, but yet so very little. Finally all she managed was to say he was in her thoughts and that she loved him.

On the eve of Friday, the 4th of December, she didn’t sleep a wink. Cole was to be hanged at eight in the morning. She kept the night-long vigil with him, turning over and over in her mind all the good memories, and praying silently that he would stay calm and his death would be quick.

As Friday was her day off, Rosie feigned deep sleep when the alarm went off at six-thirty. Once Maureen had gone downstairs she sat up in bed with the clock in front of her and watched the hands moving slowly towards the time of her father’s execution.

By five to eight she was sobbing uncontrollably with fear and grief. Cole’s face was so clear in her mind, it was almost as if he was standing before her. Dark, dark eyes full of sorrow, all bravado and swagger gone. She mentally kissed and hugged him, recalling the soapy smell of him in the mornings and offered up a prayer that he would sense her presence too at his moment of death.

She seemed to see him being brought out of his cell, hands tied behind his back and flanked by two prison officers. In her heart she knew he would keep his courage and pride even when they put the sack over his head and the rope around his neck.

‘God bless you, Daddy,’ she whispered as the hands finally reached eight. ‘I love you. And I forgive you.’

Chapter Eight

‘Get this down you, Smith,’ Linda pushed a tumbler of gin and orange into Rosie’s hands and passed another to Mary who was putting on her make-up at the dressing table.

It was New Year’s Eve and the three girls were going up to the West End to join in the celebrations. Linda insisted they all got ‘tanked up’ as she called it, before they even left Carrington Hall as the pubs would be very crowded.

Rosie sipped the drink and shuddered. ‘That’s vile,’ she exclaimed.

‘So’s sex the first time,’ Linda said with a snigger. ‘But that don’t stop people getting the taste for it. Look at Mary! She’s put the frilly knickers she had for Christmas on, just in case.’

Mary turned on the stool at the dressing table, her face pink with a combination of a liberal layer of Pan Stik make-up and indignation. ‘Are you saying I’m easy?’

‘Bejesus no,’ Linda replied in a mocking exaggerated Irish accent. ‘ ’Aven’t I been told you convent girls never let a man’s ’and creep beyond your knees? So I reckon you must be gonna strip off and jump in Trafalgar Square fountain.’

‘Eejit,’ Mary scoffed. ‘It’s freezing tonight, so it is. If you must know, I was tempted to put on the warm ones Mam gave me. But I’d die of shame to be sure if I got run over and they had to peel those off me.’

Rosie sat back on the bed and sipped the sweet sticky drink. She felt happy tonight. A fun night out, a brand new year ahead of her. She had already made her new year’s resolution and that was to become a Londoner, in appearance, mentality and behaviour.

Londoners, as she saw it, were first in line for everything. New films and plays, fashions, crazes, all began here. Elsewhere in England people were still living in much the same way as they had before the war, seemingly unaware that a whole decade had passed by. Yet here in London, despite the wholesale destruction caused by bombs, they were moving on, clearing the bomb sites, tearing down damaged houses and rebuilding. Rosie felt that Londoners were faster and more forward-thinking than their country counterparts. They embraced the new ideas from America with enthusiasm – modern housing, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and motor cars alike.

Their exuberance for life and progress was clearly illustrated in the newspapers, where even the most momentous news story was swiftly eclipsed and forgotten by something more dramatic. This point was driven home to Rosie at the time of her father’s hanging. It commanded space on every front page on the day, but the next it dropped like a stone in favour of the names Christopher Craig and Derek Bentley. They had shot a policeman while robbing a sweet warehouse in south London and they were portrayed as young hoodlums who had grown up on a diet of American gangster films. Both boys were found guilty of murder on the 11th of December, but although sixteen-year-old Craig actually fired the gun, his companion, nineteen-year-old, simple-minded Bentley, was deemed to be equally guilty because the pair of them had set out on a felonious enterprise together. Because of Craig’s age he was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, while Bentley, despite a recommendation for mercy from the jury, was given the death sentence.

Rosie had been very relieved that the public’s attention was being diverted away from her father. It was difficult enough hiding her grief and coping with the feeling that she would never, ever get over it, without constant jolts. As Christmas had crept closer and all the staff spoke of their families, her main preoccupation was getting through each day without breaking down over hers.

Yet much as she had dreaded Christmas, it had in fact been a turning point.

Two days before, the girls had decorated the day room with paper chains, garlands and balloons. On Christmas Eve the entire staff including Matron sang carols to the patients on the first floor and each of them was given a small bar of chocolate and a tangerine.

On Christmas morning after breakfast the verger from the local church had arrived dressed as Santa Claus with a sack of presents. The patients were thrilled, they clapped their hands, stamped their feet and for once there were no fights or squabbling. Everyone had two presents – whether these came from their families or were arranged by Matron, she had no idea – but they all had a remarkably similar value and content, mainly cardigans and slippers.

Even the Christmas dinner was a jolly occasion with the day-room table laid with red paper, crackers and paper hats. All the domestic staff on duty came upstairs to help wait at the table. As Rosie cut up food and passed it round, she suddenly realized that she no longer felt repelled by any of the patients. Seeing them sitting around the table in their party hats, faces lit up with excitement, she felt affection and indeed amusement, for it was a little like watching a chimps’ tea party.

She was still wary of Tabby. Archie could be absolutely disgusting what with his dribbling, masturbating and the often soiled pants, but she had overcome her revulsion enough to talk to him, brush his hair and jolly him along. Aggie with her bad legs, no nose and dome-shaped head was strange, but no longer scary. Maud was just like a little girl, old Patty and Alice were harmless, gentle souls, and as for Donald, well, she’d grown so fond of him she couldn’t quite imagine a day without him.

Perhaps Carrington Hall was a place where human rejects were dumped so as not to offend the sensibilities of so-called normal people. Maybe some of the staff were almost as batty, but at that moment Rosie was glad she was there.

It crossed her mind later that for the severely disturbed patients upstairs it was probably just like any other day, as there was the usual muffled screaming and wailing. No one sang them carols and there was no mention of Santa Claus going on up there. But she asked no questions. She felt she’d had her share of sadness in the past few months, without looking for more things to upset her.

The day staff had their Christmas dinner in the evening. Fortunately Matron had been invited out and Staff Nurse Aylwood, who was equally forbidding, had chosen not to join them, so Linda said that was worthy of a celebration and scooted off to her room to collect a hidden bottle of sweet sherry.