Rosie (6 page)

Thomas was astonished to see the girl’s face blanch.

‘You’d best leave now if you know what’s good for you.’ She put her head on one side and looked sharply at him like a little bird. ‘Our dad ain’t exactly a gentleman. He can’t tell you nothing about Heather because he don’t know where she’s gone. All you’ll do is rile him up, speaking of things that upset him. So he’ll just get mad and kick you out.’

‘Well then, you’d better tell me about her yourself,’ he said. He hoisted himself up on to the oil drum, guessing that settling down in full view of anyone coming up the lane would make her nervous. ‘She is my only living relative, and until a few weeks ago I thought she was dead. I’ve come too far to leave without learning something about her, and I don’t give up easily. So I can either sit here and wait till your dad gets back and take my chance with him, or you come somewhere else where we can talk in private. You see, Heather was just about your age when I last saw her, thirteen, a schoolgirl with pigtails. I want to know what she grew up like.’

‘I’m fifteen,’ she snapped. ‘And I’ve left school.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Thomas smiled at such indignation. She had the maturity of an older girl but her body was as undeveloped as a child’s. ‘So what’s your name then?’

‘Rosie.’

Thomas thought her name suited her perfectly. Her skin was the colour of pale pink rosebuds, her blue eyes were as brilliant as the summer sky; even the freckles across the bridge of her nose reminded him of golden pollen. She was prickly too and every bit as wild as the briar rose scrambling over the ancient abandoned tractor. Somehow he doubted she’d ever learn to tame that mop of unruly curls, or develop a little sophistication, but there was no doubt in his mind that she’d turn into a very pretty, desirable woman. Years ago he would have wanted to paint her, there was such strength and determination in her little face. But once he’d lost his leg he found he’d lost the will to paint too.

‘Your mum named you well. You’re as pretty as those wild roses,’ he said, pointing to a bush scrambling over the tractor.

Rosie blushed, and her eyes dropped to her dirty bare feet. Thomas guessed she wasn’t used to compliments.

‘I’ll let you come round the back for a cup of tea because you look tired,’ she said. She bit her lip nervously as if already sure she would regret her kindness. ‘But promise me you’ll go afterwards and that you won’t tell anyone you’ve been talking to me?’

‘I promise,’ he said.

The back yard was a total contrast to the scrap yard, neat and tidy, concreted over and well swept, with a colourful mass of flowers planted along the inside of the rough fence of wooden palings. Opposite the gate into the yard was an outhouse which seemed to be used as a workshop. Another fence and gate separated the yard from an orchard in which chickens were roaming free.

Beside a stone porch which presumably led into the kitchen, there was an old sink planted with more flowers, a wooden settle bleached white in the sun, and an old pump. Thomas glanced into the porch and saw a collection of waterproof coats and boots, but more ominous, three shotguns fixed into a rack.

‘Stay there,’ Rosie said warily, pointing to the settle. ‘I’ll just go and put the kettle on.’

Thomas sat down gratefully, easing his artificial leg out in front of him. He was concerned about the soreness; he didn’t think he could make the long walk back to Bridgwater station this afternoon, and wondered if there was a pub near by that would let him have a room for the night.

He could hear Rosie in the kitchen, the clinking of cups and a hissing noise as if she was putting a wet kettle on a solid fuel stove. The only other sounds were those of insects and a clucking of hens.

Looking at the flowers Thomas wondered who was responsible for them. There was nothing willy-nilly about the planting, the colours, heights and shapes had all been taken into consideration by someone with an artist’s eye. He couldn’t imagine a man who piled junk outside his house doing such a thing. Could there be another woman here?

He looked around him for any evidence of this. Down in the orchard was a line of washing: six men’s shirts, three pairs of vests and underpants, two sheets and a striped dress. There were a couple of smaller items too, but no other female things.

‘Who’s the gardener?’ he asked as Rosie reappeared. ‘It’s very pretty.’

‘Me,’ she said, and her face warmed as if she rarely got any appreciation for it. ‘I just love flowers. I’m going to have a go at the front garden soon. But the ground’s as hard as the Devil and I don’t have much time with the boys and Dad to look after.’

‘I expect you wish you had a sister?’ Thomas said.

Rosie sighed as if in agreement.

‘What are your brothers’ names, and how old are they?’

‘Seth’s twenty-five, Norman’s twenty-three and Alan’s five.’

Thomas raised one eyebrow. ‘So Alan was born while Heather was here?’ He thought Mrs Lovell must have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, saying Cole Parker was a widower.

‘Well, of course he was, she had him.’

Thomas stared at Rosie. ‘You what?’

‘Clean your ears out,’ she said cheekily. ‘I said of course she was here. She had him! Alan is Heather’s little ‘un.’

Thomas’s stomach seemed to plummet to the floor like a runaway lift in a movie. He wanted to ask her to repeat what she’d said again, but yet he knew he’d heard it right. He could no more imagine his little sister having a child of her own than he could imagine her flying a plane or going to a royal garden party. If she’d left the child here and skipped off it was no wonder Cole Parker wouldn’t want to talk about her.

‘So Heather married your father?’

Rosie looked at him with an expression somewhere between amusement and bafflement. ‘Marry Dad? Not likely.’

‘Then she married one of your brothers?’ It occurred to him that the eldest son must be around the same age as Heather.

‘She didn’t marry no one, not while she was here.’

His stomach plummeted further. Heather getting herself into trouble wasn’t something Thomas had ever considered. The girl he’d carried in his mind all these years had been just a schoolgirl, not unlike the girl in front of him now. It wasn’t right to fire questions of an intimate nature at her, he knew, but he had no choice.

‘So who was Alan’s father? Do you know?’

‘Dad, of course,’ Rosie said.

There was absolutely no trace of embarrassment on her young face. It was as if she was unaware of the normal social pressure to have babies in wedlock. Before Thomas could ask her anything more, the whistle of the kettle blasted out and Rosie was off into the kitchen leaving him shell-shocked. He was an uncle!

‘Rosie, why didn’t Heather take Alan with her when she left?’ Thomas asked when she came back with two thick china mugs of tea. ‘Didn’t she care about him?’

‘Of course she cared.’ Rosie’s voice was indignant. ‘I don’t suppose she had anywhere to take him to, and she knew I’d look after him right enough.’

‘Where is Alan now?’

‘At school,’ she replied, looking at him as if she considered that a daft question. ‘And you’d better drink your tea and go. I’ve got the ironing to do and a pie to make.’

Thomas drank his tea. He felt Rosie was telling the truth, at least as far as not knowing where Heather had gone. He decided he would ask questions elsewhere, sleep on the problem and decide what to do about it in the morning.

‘Did Heather ever tell you about me?’ he asked her as he got up to leave.

Rosie nodded. She was shifting from one foot to the other impatiently, but the look she gave him was curiously gentle.

‘She said you were clever and that you looked after her when she was little.’

Thomas sighed. ‘One more question before I go. Did you like Heather?’

He didn’t really know why he asked this, yet it seemed all-important to him.

To his surprise and consternation Rosie’s eyes welled with tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said quickly, afraid he may have asked one question too many. ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’

‘I don’t mind telling you,’ she replied in a small, shaky voice. ‘I loved her and I had all the best times I remember with her.’

A lump came up in Thomas’s throat and he reached out and squeezed the girl’s small hand. Whatever had happened here, if the child had loved Heather, it was almost certain Heather had loved her back. That made him and Rosie allies, and as such he knew he would have to honour his promise that he would keep their meeting secret.

But it made Heather’s disappearance all the more odd. He wasn’t going to leave Somerset until he knew more.

At eight that evening, Rosie sat by her bedroom window and allowed herself to think about Heather for the first time in months.

It was still very warm, the pink sky promising another hot day again tomorrow. She never tired of the view of the moors from her window; she saw it as her extended garden. A heron was standing as still as a statue on the edge of the ditch just beyond the orchard, and a few moments ago she had glimpsed a flash of turquoise which she knew was a kingfisher. Later as dusk fell, an owl would come to perch on the washing-line post as usual, waiting for his supper when mice came out to nibble at the chicken feed.

Living here on the Levels had taught her how precarious the balance of nature was, and how dependent every single living thing was on the chain of life. If the men didn’t clear the rhynes and ditches of weeds, the fields became flooded in the winter, drowning the livestock, destroying crops of vegetables and the fruit trees. She supposed that was why so many of the people here were tough and brutish like her father and brothers. They had to be, to survive.

She thought that Thomas Farley must be equally tough and single-minded to have survived that prison camp. She’d read about them and she knew how many men had died in them. Such a strong-willed man wouldn’t go back to London until he had discovered every last thing about his sister’s time here. That made Rosie feel very uneasy. There was an awful lot she hadn’t told him, and maybe she should have curbed her nosy streak for once and stayed hidden.

Yet deep down she wasn’t sorry she’d spoken to him, not even if it stirred up some trouble. Heather had told her so many stories about her brother, so it was lovely to discover he hadn’t died in the war. Maybe if Thomas could find Heather he’d also help her to take Alan away from here. That would be so good for Alan, and it might also mean Rosie could get a proper job.

Miss Tillingham, her teacher, had been very disappointed when Cole made her leave school as soon as she was fifteen. She said it was a wicked waste of a fine brain for her to stay at home just to be a housekeeper for her father and brothers. But even Miss Tillingham wasn’t brave enough to express her views directly to Cole Parker. Everyone knew he considered it unnecessary for girls to have anything more than a rudimentary education.

But Rosie hadn’t quite given up on learning. She always had the wireless on while she worked in the kitchen and she read every newspaper and magazine she could get her hands on. While most girls of her age could only cite King George’s death back in February as the major news of the year, Rosie knew about the ins and outs of the Korean war, the spy scandal with Burgess and Maclean, and even the Mau Mau out in Kenya. One day she intended to be something more than a housekeeper.

‘Rosie!’ A high-pitched shriek from Alan startled her.

‘What is it?’ she called back, already halfway across her room towards his room next door to hers.

‘I can’t get to sleep,’ he bleated.

Rosie squeezed past her two older brothers’ single beds towards Alan. There was little space in this room. Alan’s camp bed was squashed up against the window, and its position showed what little regard the men of this household had for its youngest member.

Seth and Norman had grown into carbon copies of their father in the course of the last few years. Their respective two-year stints in the army and the hard manual work of hauling heavy loads of scrap metal had built up their muscles, and they drank and fought like Cole did too. Until such time as Alan showed signs of becoming a thug like them, and took an interest in handling guns, hunting and snaring, Rosie didn’t think they’d ever find a kind word for their little brother. While Cole was merely indifferent to his youngest child and mostly ignored him, the boys actively despised him.

‘You should go to sleep,’ she said, sitting on Seth’s bed and leaning over to stroke her little brother’s forehead. ‘You’ve got school in the morning.’

Earlier as she was putting Alan to bed, she’d been tempted to tell him about his Uncle Thomas calling here, just so he’d know there was someone in this world aside from her who was interested in him. But Rosie knew better than to risk telling him something he might blurt out accidentally.

She looked at her brother now, searching for a resemblance to Thomas, but she couldn’t see one. Alan was a pallid, sickly looking boy with large, sad brown eyes and pale ginger hair. Thomas had sad brown eyes too but that was the only real similarity. In fact Thomas had put her in mind of Ashley Wilkes in
Gone with the Wind.
A sort of lean, aristocratic, intelligent face, so very different from the ruddy, coarse-featured men around these parts. She thought she remembered Heather saying he was five years older than her, so that would make him about thirty.

‘I could sleep if I was in your bed,’ Alan said, his big mournful eyes pleading with her.

‘Now you know what Dad would say to that,’ Rosie said gently. Cole had stopped Alan sharing her bed and room a few months back, part of a new regime intended to toughen the little boy up. Rosie always obeyed her father – to do otherwise would be foolhardy – but in this case she had been tempted again and again to disobey him because she knew her older brothers used every possible opportunity to frighten, ridicule and hurt Alan. Trying to get him off to sleep long before they got home from the pub wasn’t a certain way of protecting him from his brothers’ viciousness, but it went a long way towards avoiding it. ‘I’ll read you a story, that’ll make you sleepy.’