Rosie (48 page)

‘You’re angry,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Does it have something to do with me? Did Matron tell everyone who I am? Is that the reason they’re all going to get away with it? Because no one would believe me?’

Miss Pemberton turned in her seat to look at Rosie, ashamed that she hadn’t been able to summon up enough energy to feign jubilation at the day’s events, or even make up a few white lies.

If Rosie gave evidence against Saunders, he would almost certainly get a long prison sentence, but what would that mean to her? Defence lawyers digging up her family history in cross-examination, a chance of a new happy life vanishing out of the window. Violet wanted that man nailed, and Barnes too, but not at the expense of a kid with a noble spirit who cared enough for the weak and needy to stick her neck out.

Saunders would surface somewhere else. His sort always did. She just hoped the police would keep track of him. As for Barnes, maybe disgrace would be enough punishment, though she personally thought the woman deserved horse-whipping and prison too.

‘I’m not angry,’ Miss Pemberton lied. ‘I’m just tired. I suppose I’ve just burned myself out today. Barnes did bring the question of your father up, but only to me and I silenced her rather thoroughly. There was no question of anyone not believing you, either; everyone had the utmost admiration for your part in it all. Perhaps Barnes won’t go to prison where she belongs, Rosie, but she certainly won’t get a position of authority again and she’ll never be able to hurt you.’

‘But what will happen to Carrington Hall? Will it stay open?’

‘For the time being. I’ve roped in enough temporary staff to be getting along with for now, though of course its future depends very much on the owner. But for now all the staff still have jobs, including you if you want to stay. But that’s what I really want to talk to you about, Rosie.’

Rosie gulped. Surely Miss Pemberton wasn’t going to try and make her stay here?

‘You’ve got three or four choices, my dear,’ Miss Pemberton went on, smiling at last. ‘You could stay here with a rise in salary. You could come home with me to Somerset for a holiday while you think about what to do next. Thomas would put you up at his flat until you found another job in London. Or –’ She stopped suddenly.

‘Yes?’ Rosie prompted, wondering what the fourth choice could be. ‘Or what?’

‘You could go to Sussex to help look after Donald with his parents.’

Rosie blinked hard and her mouth fell open. She wasn’t sure she’d heard that right.

Miss Pemberton laughed at Rosie’s astounded expression and all at once her spirits lifted. Let people like Aylwood, Barnes and Saunders wallow in their own dirt. This dear girl was worth so much more, she deserved happiness.

‘As you know, it has been their desire to take Donald home for some time,’ she went on. ‘But they feel they are a little old to be starting out with him again from scratch. They don’t want you there as a nursemaid or a domestic, but as a companion to him. Someone to help him adjust to his new freedom, to keep any eye on him and teach him things. They have a fine big house, you would have a nice room and good wages. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rosie said. Donald had been on her mind so much since Coronation Day. She had missed him so much, worried about him and been afraid she would never actually see him again. She couldn’t imagine anything better than caring for him. In her mind’s eye she could see all his family as they had been on Coronation Day. She liked them all and she had no reservations about that side of it. It sounded a job from heaven.

‘They know how much you like gardening,’ Miss Pemberton smiled as she laid on the temptations. ‘They have a large garden, by all accounts, and one of their ideas is that you and Donald could work in it together. You would have regular time off, they have no intention of imprisoning you in their home. They want you to become one of their family.’

At that last sentence Rosie began to cry. Miss Pemberton had been leading her closer and closer to the gateway to heaven in everything she had said, but she’d finally found the right key to unlock it.

‘It sounds wonderful,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t think of anything I’d like better.’ She paused for a minute, struggling to find a handkerchief in her uniform pocket.

‘But there’s a “but” if I’m not much mistaken,’ Miss Pemberton said, patting Rosie’s knee. ‘Now let me guess! It couldn’t be the young man you had a date with on Wednesday, could it?’

Rosie blew her nose and wiped her eyes. She felt foolish.

‘Yes,’ she whispered sheepishly. ‘I really like him, and Sussex is a long way from London, isn’t it?’

Violet smiled. She could remember one of her old boyfriends cycling fifteen miles in the rain to meet her just for a few hours. A young doctor had once courted her from Leeds when she was in London.

‘Love can conquer all obstacles,’ she said. ‘Besides, he works for the railways, doesn’t he? Mayfield has a station, and it can’t be more than fifty miles from London.’

Rosie didn’t need to consider anything more. No job in London could possibly offer as much as what the Cooks were offering her. Gareth might tire of her, she might get bored with him, and then where would she be?

‘I do want to work for them,’ she smiled, suddenly imagining being in the country again, digging in a garden and sharing things with Donald. ‘It will be such an adventure. Yes, I do want to go.’

Violet beamed. ‘That’s the spirit,’ she said stoutly. ‘Now, when had you arranged to see this young man next?’

‘Tonight,’ Rosie blushed. She hadn’t expected Miss Pemberton to be so understanding. ‘Will it be all right for me to meet him?’

‘Of course it will. And it will work out just perfectly as Mr and Mrs Cook are driving up tomorrow to collect Donald. They’ll be thrilled to find you ready to go with them.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Rosie gasped. She thought Miss Pemberton meant in a week or two.

‘Yes, dear.’ She blinked fast in surprise at Rosie’s question. ‘The Cooks wanted to take Donald away at the first hint of trouble. The only reason they haven’t done so is because I was afraid such action would alert Barnes that something was going on. Now what I suggest is that you leave here tomorrow morning first thing in a taxi, telling anyone who asks you are going home to Somerset. Go to Thomas’s flat and wait there for the Cooks to pick you up later in the day. That way no one here will have any idea where you are going.’

‘Have you told the Cooks about me?’ Rosie asked tentatively.

‘Only that I came into your life when your father died and arranged for you to work here,’ she said. ‘That is all that is relevant. As for Thomas, who they’ve had a few telephone conversations with, they believe him to be a friend of mine, someone I put you in touch with when you first came to London.’

‘Do you think I should tell them all about myself?’ Rosie asked in a small voice.

‘I think that has to be ultimately your decision, my dear. But run along now and have your tea before the rest of the staff come off duty. I’m quite sure you’ve had enough for one day.’

Rosie had had a bath and washed her hair by the time Maureen came upstairs.

‘Simmonds said Matron left this afternoon in her brother-in-law’s car,’ she said, sitting down on the bed and glancing over at Rosie sitting at the dressing-table. ‘She said Mr Brace-Coombes left a few minutes afterwards. But then I suppose Sister Pemberton told you all this when you were having your chat in the garden?’

The sarcasm was laid on with a trowel but Rosie decided not to rise to the bait. ‘No, she didn’t, actually. She only wanted to know what I wanted to do now. Has she said anything to you?’ Rosie was full of excitement and that made her feel a bit sorry for Maureen. She had nothing to look forward to and she seemed so lost and frightened.

‘Yes, she said I still had a job if I wanted to stay. But she was a bit frosty. She said I wasn’t to communicate with Matron in any way. As if I would want to.’

Rosie had the distinct feeling Miss Pemberton had said a great deal more than that, but she wasn’t going to ask. Suddenly the politics in Carrington Hall meant nothing to her.

‘It will be much better here now,’ Rosie tried to sound encouraging. ‘Staff Nurse Clegg’s nice, but I don’t think Miss Pemberton will leave you on the second floor.’

‘As if you care,’ Maureen said spitefully. ‘I suppose you’re going home to Auntie tomorrow?’

‘Yes, I am as a matter of fact,’ she said. ‘And I can’t wait.’

‘I don’t think anyone will stay,’ Maureen said and began to cry. ‘Donald’s going home tomorrow with his mum and dad. Mary’s talking about going back to Ireland and Linda said she’s only going to give it a week or two because Clegg is contacting all the patients’ families to tell them what’s happened and she reckons Brace-Coombes will have to close the place down.’

Rosie was torn between sympathy and wanting to get ready for Gareth, but her sympathy won. ‘Look, Maureen,’ she said, getting up from the dressing-table and going over to sit beside her. She put her arm around Maureen’s shoulder. ‘You must see this as the beginning of something new, and almost certainly better. Why don’t you look around for a new job too, and start all over again where no one knows about anything?’

‘It’s all right for you, you’re pretty and clever,’ Maureen sniffled against her shoulder. ‘I’m plain and people don’t like me.’

‘No one around here likes me either,’ Rosie shrugged. Neither Linda nor Mary had been up to see her and she didn’t think they were intending to either. ‘And being clever hasn’t got me very far. You’ve still got a job and I haven’t.’

Once she was out of the front door Rosie breathed a sigh of relief. Today had been long and exhausting and Maureen had just about finished her off.

But as she walked down to the gates, reality suddenly hit her. She was free. She would never have to clean another dirty bottom, except perhaps a baby’s, she hadn’t ever got to go back on either of the wards again. Tomorrow she would pack her clothes, climb into a taxi and enter a whole new world. Donald wouldn’t be told she was joining him until after he’d left here tomorrow. She couldn’t wait to see his face when his parents called for her in Hampstead. All those things she’d longed to do with him – read books, walk in fields, ride on buses, take him shopping – she could do them all now. It was going to be wonderful.

Filled with wild excitement, her tiredness forgotten, she raced to the gates, opened them and ran out smiling with happiness. And there, just a few yards along the road, Gareth was sitting on his motorbike waiting for her.

They didn’t go to the pictures. It was too warm an evening to sit inside in the dark and there was so much to talk about. They drove out into the country and as they walked hand in hand across fields Rosie spilled out all that had happened today, and her part in starting it all. It was such a relief to be able to talk about it. By the time she’d finished she felt as if she’d pulled a plug on a whole bathful of dirty water and watched it drain away.

‘I just wish I could have peeped through a window while that old witch was being questioned,’ Rosie giggled. ‘But Miss Pemberton is very discreet, she probably won’t ever tell me the whole story.’

‘Fancy you being involved in all this and not saying anything to me.’ Gareth looked at her with an expression approaching awe. He hated the idea of her being near a man like Saunders, he guessed exactly what he’d done to the mad woman, even though Rosemary had only referred to it as ‘interfering with her’. ‘I’d have been out of there on the next bus. I wouldn’t have worried about the patients, only myself.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ Rosie smiled. It felt so good being admired, it wasn’t something she was used to. ‘Anyway, it’s a good job I didn’t turn tail and run – I wouldn’t have got the job with the Cooks.’

Gareth was a little confused because he had a set idea in his head about how girls should be and Rosemary wasn’t quite slotting into it. He was glad she was leaving Carrington Hall – he wasn’t comfortable with having a girl working in a loony-bin. He thought the Cooks were nice people, but he couldn’t see for the life of him why she’d want to bury herself in the country looking after Donald. He would get a lot of stick from his mates if anyone found out what she did. Their girls all worked in offices, shops or hairdressers’.

‘Are you really sure that’s what you want to do?’ he asked. ‘I know they are nice people. But it’s a long way from London. How will I see you?’

Rosie thought it was better to act cool. She had read in magazines that men were always keener if they had to do all the running.

‘Of course it’s what I want to do. And you’re the one who knows all about trains, so I don’t need to tell you how to get there,’ she said teasingly. ‘But I expect you’ll forget me in a few weeks anyway.’

‘I won’t,’ he said, pulling her into his arms. ‘I shall be thinking about you night and day, wishing I was with you.’

When he kissed her a little later, it wasn’t a gentle light kiss like the one when they’d parted on Wednesday night. This time his arms went right around her and his mouth came down on hers hot and hard.

‘I really like you,’ he whispered into her neck. ‘I want you for my girl, serious like. I didn’t intend to say anything like this so soon, but now you’re going away I have to. Promise me you’ll write to me?’

‘Yes, if you want me to,’ Rosie agreed, thrilled by his words and by the touch of his lips on her neck. ‘I like you too, Gareth. You’re the only thing which makes me feel a bit sad about going.’

Gareth saw a glimmer of hope. Perhaps she was only going to Sussex because she had nothing else at the moment. Maybe in a few weeks she’d be tired of it and then he could persuade her to come back to London. He imagined helping her find a room somewhere near him in Clapham, taking her out and introducing her to all his mates. He’d be the envy of them all, none of their girls was so pretty.

He put his arm around her and they walked on until they came to a small copse. ‘Let’s sit down here,’ he suggested.

Soon, sitting down on the grass and kissing led to lying down, and their kisses grew longer and more passionate. Rosie had often wondered what the attraction was for couples who lay in the parks in one another’s arms for what seemed like for ever. Now she understood. Each kiss grew deeper, Gareth’s tongue probed into her mouth teasingly, and his hands roamed over her back, arms and buttocks, drawing her closer and closer to him.