Rosie (53 page)

‘No one ever made a career out of gardening,’ Gareth scoffed. ‘It’s just a job they give to people with no brains, the same as dustmen.’

Rosie smarted. ‘Now look here, Know-it-all Jones,’ she snapped. ‘I want to do something with my life. Whether that is nursing, gardening or something entirely different is up to me, however strange you and your mother find it. I don’t want to work behind the counter at Woolworth’s and end up marrying someone who’ll expect me to be at his beck and call for the rest of my life. And I want more than just cleaning windows, plumping up cushions and polishing brass to keep me happy.’

‘That’s taking a pop at my mother,’ Gareth retorted, his mouth tightening.

‘Perhaps,’ Rosie sighed, a little ashamed of herself. ‘But she hasn’t been very welcoming, has she?’

‘I think she’s a bit jealous. She and I have always been so close,’ he said. ‘Owen’s more for Dad. I’m the one who talks to her, makes a bit of a fuss over her. I suppose she’s guessed I’ve fallen in love with you.’

Although Rosie’s heart leapt at being told that he loved her, the moment was entirely spoiled by hearing it tacked on to an explanation about his relationship with his mother. Her feelings were already bruised, now she felt cheated.

‘I think I’d better go home tonight,’ she said. ‘Your mum doesn’t approve of me and I don’t want to be somewhere I’m not welcome.’

‘No, Rosie, please don’t do that,’ he begged her, catching hold of her and trying to hug her there in the street. ‘Look, I’ll take you out somewhere this evening, and tomorrow if it isn’t raining again we’ll go out into the country on the bike.’

By the time they got back for their tea, Rosie had forgotten her threat to go home. After their little spat Gareth had made her laugh, and it had been nice looking in the shops, walking hand in hand, and having a milkshake in an ice-cream parlour with tall stools, just like she’d seen in American films. It was exciting to be back in London with all the crowds doing their Saturday shopping. A crowd in Mayfield was never any bigger than six people. But best of all was just being with Gareth again, talking about all they’d done in the two weeks since they’d last met and laughing together as Rosie told him all the daft things Donald had said and done.

But as they went indoors, Mrs Jones was on her hands and knees rubbing at the parquet flooring in the hall. ‘Your dripping coat took the polish off my floor,’ she said, looking up at Rosie accusingly.

Rosie felt suddenly chilled to the bone. ‘I’m
so
sorry,’ she said in an icy voice. ‘But Gareth didn’t warn me that people took their shoes and coats off in the front garden here.’

Gareth looked alarmed at this sarcastic remark.

‘Well, you are a little madam,’ Mrs Jones said, getting up off her knees, her thin lips set in a straight line. ‘The moment I saw you I knew you’d been brought up without any respect for anything or anybody.’

Rosie was so staggered by this unjustified statement that for a moment she could only stare at the woman in amazement. ‘I think I’d better go home, Mrs Jones,’ she said after a second or two. ‘I can see I’m not welcome here and it was a mistake coming. So if you’ll just get my bag for me, Gareth, I won’t need to step any further on to your mother’s clean floor.’

‘Hoity-toity,’ Mrs Jones shot back, folding her arms and pursing her lips. ‘Been used to better than this, have we?’

Rosie looked at Gareth fully expecting him to say something to stop his mother’s nastiness, but all he did was stand there gawping stupidly. A surge of anger welled up inside her.

‘No, I haven’t actually,’ she snapped back at the woman. ‘The cottage I was brought up in was probably very similar to the place you had in Kentish Town, not much better than a slum. In fact I’d never seen a polished floor till I worked in Carrington Hall. But where I come from it’s the warmth of the welcome we give our guests which counts, not how posh our house is.’

Mrs Jones’s thin eyebrows shot skywards.

‘Get my bag please, Gareth,’ Rosie added. ‘I’m leaving.’

When Gareth disappeared obediently up the stairs without a word, Rosie knew he must know a whole weekend here was now out of the question. Mrs Jones got down on her knees again and continued to rub at the floor, even though there was no discernible watermark to be seen. Rosie waited, nose in the air.

Gareth came back down the stairs, seconds later, her bag in his hand.

Rosie opened the front door. ‘Thank you for the lunch, Mrs Jones. I’m sorry I put you to so much trouble,’ she said. She held out her hand to Gareth for her bag.

‘I’m coming with you,’ he said, and without even turning to look at his mother he followed Rosie out.

‘There’s no need for you to come,’ Rosie snapped at him once he’d shut the door behind him, trying to snatch her bag from his hand. ‘I know the way back to Victoria.’

Gareth wouldn’t let her have the bag, so she walked out of the garden gate without it, and he followed. ‘I’m sorry, Rosie,’ he said, catching hold of her hand once they were in the street. ‘She can’t help the way she is, it’s her nerves. She has bad days and this is just one of them.’

Rosie began to cry as they walked in silence towards the bus stop. She’d looked forward to this weekend for so long, and it had all gone wrong.

‘Don’t cry,’ Gareth said. ‘I’ll talk to Mum when I get home tonight. I promise you she’ll never be like that to you again.’

‘She won’t get the chance,’ Rosie said. ‘I wouldn’t go there again even if you paid me to. She was hateful, Gareth.’

He pulled her into a shop doorway and held her tightly until she stopped crying. ‘I meant what I said earlier,’ he whispered. ‘I love you, Rosie. If it came to choosing between you and my mum, I’d choose you.’

Rosie felt too miserable to ask why he hadn’t stuck up for her. All she could think was that her happy dreams had gone down the pan, and that spending two pounds on a new dress and her train fare had been such a waste of money. But Gareth kept cuddling her, whispering endearments in her ear, until the anger and hurt began to fade.

‘Don’t go home till the last train,’ he begged her as they walked to the bus stop. ‘It’s not till nine, so we can go up West for a bit and look around.’

The top of the bus was almost empty. They sat in the back seat, and as it trundled slowly through the traffic towards the West End, Gareth tried to explain about his mother. ‘She hates London,’ he said. ‘You see, when Dad brought us up here she had to leave all her family behind – she had five sisters and three brothers all in the same village, and then there were all their children and her parents too. She wasn’t too bad when Owen and I were little, she had plenty to do just keeping us clean; you can imagine what it was like living in a coal yard. And during the war people were friendlier too, neighbours popped in and out, they helped each other. But once Dad bought that house and first Owen went off to do his National Service, then me, she was all alone. Dad doesn’t help much, he stays out of her way when she’s having her funny turns. See, he thinks she should be happy just having a nice house.’

‘But if she’s lonely, why isn’t she pleased to see new people?’ Rosie thought that Mrs Jones was a candidate for a loony-bin. She agreed entirely with Gareth’s father: she couldn’t see how anyone could be unhappy if they had enough to eat and a nice house and garden. She thought the woman should be grateful she had so much.

‘If I knew the answer to that, perhaps I could cure her,’ Gareth sighed. ‘I really thought she’d warm to you. I’m sorry, Rosie.’

It wasn’t Rosie’s first experience of victimization. As a child most people had avoided speaking to her because of her father and brothers; Mrs Bentley hadn’t liked her, neither had Matron. She thought Mrs Jones was every bit as nasty as the other two women, and she wouldn’t lose any sleep about never seeing her again. But she didn’t want to lose Gareth.

‘I’m sorry too that I was rude to her.’ Rosie leaned her head against his shoulder wearily. ‘She just made me so angry.’

‘Let’s forget it,’ he said. ‘She might be my mother, but you’re my girl and it’s you who is really important to me.’

The West End looked very different from how it had been at New Year when she came with Linda and Mary. There were still huge crowds, but by daylight without the neon lights it wasn’t so magical. She recognized the pub they’d been in that evening and to her surprise it was called the White Bear, the same pub Heather said she’d gone to for a drink with Cole the night he asked her to be his housekeeper.

They window-shopped in Regent Street, then went back down to Piccadilly and sat in the window of a cafe eating egg and chips, watching the people go by. There was a different atmosphere to the area now the shoppers and office staff had gone home. Every few minutes a throng of people would suddenly erupt out of the stairways from the tube below: groups of girls in strappy cocktail dresses, stoles around their shoulders, with carefully made-up faces and every hair in place, making for the Empire in Leicester Square; young men in smart lounge suits, and with Brylcreemed hair, stopped on the corner to have a cigarette and watch the girls. There were couples wandering hand in hand, just as she and Gareth had been doing, and taxis sped around Eros providing only the briefest glimpse of more elegant, older people on their way to theatres.

‘I wish it was dark so I could see the lights again,’ Rosie said wistfully, then went on to tell him about her evening out with the girls in the West End.

‘I’ll bring you up here again when the nights draw in,’ Gareth said. ‘There’s all sorts come out, not just the crowd we see now who are off to the dances, but actors and actresses, gangsters, ladies of the night.’

‘Really? How do you know?’

‘Owen and I used to come up here a lot just after the war. I was only fourteen then, and Owen was sixteen.’ He grinned wickedly. ‘Owen always wanted to find a girl, but he never had the nerve to go up to one. We used to spy on them and follow them when they picked up a man. Then one night when Owen was just about seventeen, he offered a girl two shillings. Know what she said?’

Rosie shook her head. ‘Tell me.’

‘She said, “For two bob you can just about afford one of the old crows up Berwick Street. A nice-looking boy like you should be able to get it for free anyway.” Owen was so embarrassed he never wanted to come up here again.’

‘Would you pay someone for that?’ Rosie asked. She really wished she could see one of these girls; the thought of it made her strangely excited.

‘Never,’ he said, looking astounded that she felt the need to ask. ‘When I was in the army some of the other lads did, but not me. Sex isn’t anything unless you love someone.’

Rosie smiled. She wanted to ask if he’d loved anyone else enough to try it. But she didn’t. She didn’t want to know about other girls in his life.

The time went by quickly, and suddenly it was half past eight. They rushed down into the tube station but it was ten minutes before a train came. They had to change at the Embankment, and then to their horror the train stopped in the tunnel between Westminster and St James’s Park. Minutes ticked by.

‘I’m going to miss the train,’ Rosie said in alarm. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘It’ll be all right,’ Gareth insisted. ‘It only takes a couple of minutes to get up into the mainline station. We can run.’

They did run, like the wind, up the stairs two at a time and across the station to platform three, but the gates were just closing and the guard was waving the flag.

Gareth begged the man to let Rosie on to the platform, but he would have none of it, and as they watched helplessly, the train pulled out. Rosie burst into tears.

‘It’s okay, we’ll go back to Mum’s,’ Gareth said, cuddling her.

‘I’d sooner spend the night here on the station than at your mum’s,’ she said through her tears and meaning it. She’d trusted Gareth to give her a good weekend and she felt he was responsible for everything that had gone wrong. ‘This whole day has been a disaster.’

Gareth just held her for a moment. ‘You could come home to my digs,’ he suggested eventually. ‘It’s not very nice, but it’s better than trying to sleep on a bench.’

‘But your landlady?’ she sniffed. Gareth had said in his letters that she was a dragon.

‘On Saturday nights she always goes to the pub,’ he said. I could easily get you in my room and she’ll be too drunk when she gets home to worry about me. She never gets up till gone eleven on Sundays either. We could slip out before she wakes up.’

‘But where would I sleep?’ Rosie said nervously.

‘In my bed, of course. I can sleep on the floor.’

‘But-’

Gareth put one finger on her lips. He was smiling and his eyes twinkled. ‘I’ll be a real gentleman, I promise you.’

‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ he said, making a slashing gesture across his throat. ‘I told you earlier that I love you, Rosie. I want you for ever, not for just one night.’

Those words rang in her ears as they caught the train to Clapham Junction. Even the sound of the train wheels seemed to be repeating them over and over again. It was dusk now, the sky a brilliant fiery red, and with Gareth’s arm around her she felt safe.

Paige Street in Clapham was every bit as grim as Gareth had said. Worse even than a slummy part of Bristol she’d wandered into once by mistake. Even the glorious sunset and the deepening dusk couldn’t mask the aura of poverty that slipped out of every open door in the soot-blackened terrace. There were no front gardens here, no trees or flowers. Babies were crying, the smells of drains and frying chips wafted past them, and the few children who played ball in the street looked thin and pale.

‘This was what it was like in Kentish Town,’ Gareth said, holding on to her hand as if he thought she might turn tail and run. ‘I hated it when I first came here, but you can get used to anything. At least the people are friendly – that’s more than can be said for the neighbours in Mill Hill.’

Rosie could see he was very embarrassed. He really thought she had never seen poverty or dirt before. But she made no comment; this was not an appropriate moment to try and describe how she had been brought up.