Rosie (45 page)

As Thomas went down the stairs to let Miss Pemberton out of the shop at seven-twenty, Rosie was waiting just beyond the gates of Carrington Hall for Gareth.

Anyone walking down Ridge Lane on a warm summer evening would find it hard to believe that the old house half-hidden by stately trees was the site of so much human misery. The sign on the iron gates gave no indication it was an asylum, it could have been a hostel, or a school. Ivy and clematis scrambling up the walls hid most of the peeling stucco, and two huge peony bushes in full flower distracted the eye from the rest of the somewhat neglected front garden. Earlier on in the day there might be pale, sad faces pressed up against those barred first-floor windows, but at this time in the evening the patients had all been moved on to their dormitories at the back of the house.

The sweet smell of newly cut grass in the gardens of the two bungalows opposite, the sound of children’s laughter, mingling with the soft pat of ball on racquet from somewhere unseen and a tinkling of a piano would give any walker a feeling that this was a good place to live, not quite countryside, but not suburbia either. They might spot the pretty girl standing beneath the overhanging sycamore tree and smile, guessing by her nervous stance, her pretty pink and white summer dress and carefully arranged hair, that she was eagerly awaiting her boyfriend. No one would guess that in the past week someone so young could have been subjected to such terrible experiences.

Rosie had been on tenterhooks all day, one moment so nervous she felt she’d have to stand Gareth up, the next counting the minutes till she saw him. All week her mind had been firmly on Carrington Hall, but for the past few hours her mind had been concentrating purely on this date tonight and her own appearance.

Was the pink lipstick she’d bought in Woolworth’s too bright? Should she have worn a cardigan? The heels of her shoes were a little worn down, would he notice? Suppose she got a ladder in her new nylons? Would he try to kiss her? And if he did should she let him, or would that make him think she was easy?

The sound of a motorbike coming down the road made Rosie turn. If the rider hadn’t waved she wouldn’t have realized it was Gareth; she hadn’t expected him to arrive on a motorbike.

He wore grey flannel slacks, an open-necked white shirt and a tweed jacket. He stopped a few feet from her, the engine still ticking over. He grinned and ran one hand over his tousled brown curls to smooth them down.

‘I half expected to call at the house and be fobbed off with some excuse,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you’d be waiting for me.’

Rosie was struck dumb for a moment. Not only was the bike a surprise, but he looked even better than the picture she’d held in her mind. The week’s sunshine had tanned his face, it made his eyes look like periwinkles and his teeth very white.

‘I waited here because Matron doesn’t like boys calling at Carrington Hall,’ she managed to blurt out. ‘I didn’t think to tell you that last week.’

He cut the engine but remained seated on the bike, his face crinkled up into an engaging grin. ‘I’m not sure how to take that,’ he said. ‘Do you mean you’re waiting here to tell me to get lost? Or have we still got a date?’

Rosie hesitated. In situations like this in films, girls always came back with something saucy which made them seem cute and desirable. But she couldn’t think of anything smart to say. ‘I meant I’d like to get away from here quickly so Matron doesn’t see me.’

‘Are you brave enough to hop on the back?’ he asked. ‘Or shall I park it here and we’ll walk somewhere?’

Motorbikes to Rosie brought back only good memories of her brothers and her father; she had ridden pillion with them from when she was a small girl. ‘I love motorbikes,’ she said and without considering whether it would mess up her hair which she’d spent so long arranging, she leapt on behind him.

‘Hold tight!’ he said as he kick-started it, and before she had time to grasp his waist, they were roaring off down the road.

Rosie’s knowledge of the geography of north London was limited to the bus route into the city, but Gareth went another way. Within a few minutes they were on a quiet country lane, speeding along with the wind sweeping Rosie’s hair into a tangle.

‘Are you cold?’ he yelled over his shoulder. ‘I should have told you I was on a bike, and you could have brought a jacket or a jumper.’

Rosie was a little cold, but it felt wonderful after being trapped inside all day. ‘I’m fine,’ she yelled back. ‘It’s so nice to be in the fresh air.’

She was exhilarated by the speed. Pretty cottages, views across fields and woodlands flashed by and the nastier events of the day blew away like dandelion clocks. As she leaned into the bends, her hands on his waist, a cheek against his back, her nervousness of him vanished.

Some twenty minutes later they drove into a small village centred round a green with a duck pond. A few people were sitting on benches outside a pub. Gareth slowed right down. ‘Shall we stop here for a drink?’ he asked, turning his head to her. ‘Riding around is nice, but I can’t talk to you.’

Rosie agreed and Gareth parked the bike. ‘My hair must look like a haystack,’ she laughed as she hopped off, trying to smooth it down with her hands. She hoped she hadn’t got mascara running down her cheeks too.

He looked appraisingly at her, and smiled. ‘It’s windswept but it looks very pretty. Your hair is the first thing I noticed about you, it’s such a lovely colour.’

Gareth had a pint of beer and Rosie had lemonade. She expected he would try to persuade her to have something stronger as other boys had, but he didn’t. They sat on one of the benches in a patch of warm sunshine, watching the ducks on the pond, and Gareth asked her about Donald.

Rosie had read in advice columns in magazines that a girl on her first date should ask the boy about his work and hobbies and never talk about herself. But as he had asked about Donald she had no alternative but to explain a little of what had happened since Coronation day. She did her best to make the story if not funny, at least flippant and entertaining, omitting the horror. ‘So I haven’t seen him,’ she finished up. ‘I know his father called to see him and I’m sure he explained a bit about where I was, but just the same Donald must be so confused.’

‘Your Matron sounds like a right Tartar,’ Gareth said sympathetically. ‘Why don’t you write to your mum and dad and ask them to do something?’

‘I haven’t got a mum and dad,’ she blurted out. ‘My mother died when I was six and my dad last year. That’s why I came here to work.’

To her surprise Gareth looked deeply troubled, and after the terrible week she’d had, such unexpected concern was very comforting.

‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m so sorry, Rosemary. That’s really tough.’

Rosie shrugged and smiled at him. ‘There’s lots worse off than me. But don’t let’s talk about sad stuff. Tell me about you? Did you find your friends after the Coronation? What are your digs like? Were you born in Wales? You haven’t got a Welsh accent.’

‘Yes, I found my mates. The digs are pretty dingy. I left Wales when I was two and that’s why I don’t have the accent,’ he said, grinning as he answered all her questions in the order she fired them. ‘But my parents are still as Welsh as leeks. We come from the Rhondda Valley, my father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all miners, but in 1933 Dad made the break and came to London to look for work. Walked all the way he did, picked berries at the side of the roads, never touched the shilling he had in his pocket for emergencies. It was three years later when he sent for Mum, Owen and me, and by then he had a little coal business.’

Rosie loved to hear stories, especially family ones, and she encouraged Gareth to tell her everything, starting when he got to London.

‘I can remember being shocked that London was rows and rows of small dark houses with no green hills beyond,’ he laughed. ‘The other kids sneered at me and Owen because we talked odd. Owen’s two years older than me and he was always getting into fights over it. But the main thing that bewildered me was that Dad kept saying how much better off we were. To me the little two-up, two-down house in Kentish Town wasn’t any better than the one we’d left in Wales. What’s more, instead of the coal being down the pit, here it was right outside the kitchen door, great shiny piles of it.’

Rosie smiled. His description made her think of May Cottage and the junk outside the door.

‘I asked Mum why Dad kept saying we were better off once,’ Gareth said reflectively. ‘She said the difference was that there was a sign on the front of our house saying “Davy Jones Coal and Coke Merchant”, and that meant the coal belonged to us, as did the horse and cart Dad delivered it on, and we had a flushing lavatory too. But that didn’t mean much to me then.’

From a very early age Gareth had it drummed into him that it was a man’s duty to better himself, and his father was held up as a shining example. Now that he was an adult he could appreciate how courageous his father was to leave the valleys in the middle of the Depression, and try his hand in London. He knew too that there was no luck in what Davy Jones accomplished, only hard work and gritty determination.

‘So why didn’t you become a coal man too?’ Rosie asked.

‘Because I love trains,’ he said simply. ‘I left school just as the war ended. Owen had already been working with Dad for two years, there wasn’t really enough work for me too at that time, and besides, I loathed humping coal around. Mum wanted me to be an engineer or an electrician but I stuck out for an apprenticeship with the railways. By the time I was eighteen and got called up for National Service, Dad had made enough money to buy the house in Mill Hill. The house in Kentish Town became the yard office and I was even more hell-bent on being a train driver.’

‘Where do you drive trains to?’ Rosie asked, imagining him with a soot-blackened face leaning out of the engine wreathed in steam.

‘I shunt them up and down in the yard at Clapham Junction,’ he said with a rueful smirk. ‘Sometimes if I’m lucky I get to be fireman on a local run. But it will be some time I expect before they let me loose as a driver on a passenger train. The old blokes guard their jobs closely, they don’t like us keen young ones.’

Gareth’s favourite day-dream for almost as long as he could remember had been to drive the
Flying Scotsman.
As a small child he had spent all his spare time at King’s Cross and Euston stations looking at the big steam engines with the kind of adoration other kids gave to sportsmen and film stars. He collected pictures of them, read every book he could lay his hands on about them. It was an all-consuming passion that until a week ago had never been ousted by anything else other than his motorbike.

‘I like trains too,’ Rosie said, remembering the advice in the magazines that you had to show enthusiasm for a boy’s work and interests. ‘Not that I’ve been on many. In fact, when I came up to London that was the first time. But I’d love to travel more and see the rest of England.’

Gareth grinned. He thought it would be good to show her a few of his favourite engines. ‘What on earth made you want to work in a loony-bin?’

‘I didn’t want to. I wanted to be a nurse,’ Rosie replied. ‘But I’m not old enough yet, so this seemed a perfect place to fill in the time. I’m thinking about looking for something else now. I don’t think I can stand the second floor much longer. The only trouble is I’ll have to find somewhere else to live too.’

‘I bet my mum would put you up if you were really stuck,’ he said impulsively. ‘My old room’s empty.’

Rosie was touched by his kindness. He was so different from the loutish types she’d met in the past at dance halls. She had a feeling that if she was to tell him the whole truth about herself and Carrington Hall he’d really understand. ‘I couldn’t expect her to do that,’ she said. ‘But it’s kind of you to offer. I was a bit fed up until tonight, being stuck indoors and stuff. I’m not an indoors person really and coming out on your motorbike has made me feel a lot better. Now tell me about these dingy digs of yours and your friends.’

They sat outside the pub until it grew dark, talking so easily and naturally Rosie felt as if she’d known him for years. He told her more about his family, their home and his mother.

‘She’s one of a dying breed of women,’ he laughed. ‘She lives only for the men in her life, cooking, baking, scrubbing. But she irritates me a bit sometimes. Dad’s worked his fingers to the bone to buy her a nice house with every luxury you can think of, but she still penny-pinches. Some of the gadgets he’s bought her, like an electric kettle, she won’t even use. She says it’s wasteful to boil a whole kettle when she only wants enough hot water for one cup of tea. She measures it out into a saucepan and heats it up in that. She only uses the vacuum cleaner once a week, the rest of the time she goes round with a dustpan and brush. Was your mother like that too?’

‘She was always cleaning too, as I remember,’ Rosie replied, glad of an opportunity to be truthful about how she was brought up. ‘But our cottage was very primitive, we didn’t even have electricity when she was alive, so she was forced to do everything the hard way.’ She bypassed any potential minefields by swiftly moving on to tell him about her first job with Mrs Bentley in Bristol and how she had lectured her in ‘doing things the correct way’.

‘I’m really glad she taught me all those things now,’ she giggled after she’d described how the table had to be set just so and how she corrected her speech. ‘Or I wouldn’t have known how to behave with the Cooks. I didn’t know how to lay a table properly, and I suppose I spoke like a farmer. Mr Bentley was nice though, and I loved their garden. I used to tidy it up when they weren’t around.’

Gareth looked at her in some amazement. ‘I really thought you came from a snooty family like the Cooks,’ he said. ‘You looked so at home with them in that posh place.’

‘I’d never seen anywhere that grand until that day,’ she admitted, explaining a little of how she came to be invited. ‘I’d just die for a home like that!’ She paused, then laughed. ‘That’s a very silly expression. You couldn’t get much pleasure out of it if you were dead, could you? Anyway if I was rich I’d want a garden. I love growing things.’