Rosie (76 page)

It wasn’t until Rosie knelt up on the bed beside him and slowly began to undress him that he was reminded she had always been a carer, and that she had bathed and dressed adults with worse disabilities than his. She took off his shirt first, running her fingertips across the smooth skin of his chest, kissing his shoulders, arms and abdomen with such tenderness that he felt the embarrassment fading.

Half nurse, half lover, she slowly stripped him of his shoes and trousers, down to his underpants. He held his breath, searching her face for signs of panic or disgust when she saw the stone-coloured artificial leg lying next to his normal, muscular one, but her loving expression remained unchanged. ‘You have a beautiful body,’ she murmured as her hands moved to the straps. ‘This is the last hurdle.’

The leg clanked as she dropped it to the floor and Thomas closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and waited for the expected gasp. But instead he felt a soft hand stroke the scarred stump tenderly. ‘There,’ she whispered. ‘You can open your eyes now. There are no more secrets between us.’

Thomas opened his eyes to see her through his tears. Her face was serene, her eyes soft with love, and she was caressing and looking at his body with adoration.

He pulled her down to him, overcome by emotion. The mouth that met his was as hungry as his own and he knew that they really had leapt over that last hurdle.

‘You are an angel,’ he whispered. ‘I love you so much.’

She climbed off his bed and began to undress herself. Thomas moved himself round into the bed and watched her with awe. Her dress slid down to the floor, leaving her in a cream satin petticoat. Like a practised temptress she lifted one leg on to the bed and unfastened her stocking, peeling it off slowly, then the other. She smiled at him as she lowered one strap of the petticoat over her shoulder, then the other, and slowly the satin slithered down her slender body, leaving her in satin knickers and a matching brassière.

She climbed back on to the bed and it was only then that Thomas realized she was just as embarrassed about revealing her body as he was.

‘I’ve never seen anything so perfect,’ he whispered as he slid his hands around her body and unfastened the hook of her bra. Her breasts were small and uptilted, nipples erect in the cold room, her skin creamy with just a hint of pink that reminded him of the inside of seashells. ‘Come into bed. You’re cold.’

For Rosie it was the best, most thrilling moment in her life as she cuddled into Thomas’s warm body. She hadn’t expected to be repelled by his leg. Any thoughts she’d had previously were just curiosity. It wasn’t ugly as he’d led her to believe, just a thigh ending above the knee and neatly and smoothly gathered together. She didn’t understand why anyone would find it daunting. As for the rest of his body, that was just perfect, a smooth and muscular chest, powerful arms and shoulders. She loved every inch of him.

That feeling of love and adoration became even stronger as he caressed her. His fingertips were so sensitive compared with the rough manner in which Gareth had often handled her, and his kisses sent her off on to another, higher plane. He moved down the bed to kiss and suck at her breasts, and her body seemed to melt into his as if they were one. But it was the things he whispered as he was loving her that made it extra-wonderful – how perfect her breasts were, the silkiness of her skin and how much he wanted her.

Her knickers and his underpants seemed to vanish as if by magic. He gently stroked her vagina and gasped with pleasure as she caressed his penis. There was no rush for fulfilment or any sense that this bliss might suddenly end. It was just perfect eroticism which gradually built into an ever-spiralling ecstasy.

With Gareth, the lack of comfort and the fear of being caught when he petted her had all too often prevented her from getting fully aroused, much less given her any real satisfaction. In the last year or so Gareth had only ever been interested in his own needs, and once they were met he became bored. It wasn’t so with Thomas. He ejaculated once and whispered apologies, but he carried on petting her and to her surprise and delight almost immediately grew hard again.

It was a feast of pleasure. Every inch of her body responded to his touch, each kiss deeper and more sensual. Rosie kissed all of him too, his back, his stomach, his penis and his inner thighs, right down to his injury, glorying in the sensation that never again would he feel shame about it.

But it was when he parted the lips of her vagina and used his tongue on her there that Rosie finally abandoned the last of her inhibitions. She screamed out her pleasure, writhed and bucked under his touch, desperate to reach the point she knew she was heading for. Then at last she felt a burning, melting sensation that seemed to come from deep within, and pulling Thomas towards her she demanded he enter her.

Later as she lay in the rosy afterglow, she was surprised that it hadn’t hurt. But at the moment of entry nothing crossed her mind except the great need to have him inside her at all costs. It was wonderful, so thrilling, satisfying and tender. Nothing in her life had ever moved her so much. Tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She called out his name and clung to him like a limpet. She felt like a real woman at last.

Rosie awoke the next morning to hear church bells ringing and, as she groggily opened her eyes, she found Thomas leaning on one elbow looking down at her.

‘So the sleeping princess has finally woken,’ he said. ‘I nipped out and asked them to ring the bells because I couldn’t manage to wake you.’

‘It must have been that champagne,’ she said. They had finished the bottle after the first bout of love-making, then started all over again.

‘And to think I assumed it was my love-making which exhausted you,’ he smiled. ‘I hope you aren’t going to tell me you don’t remember anything about last night?’

Rosie laughed and snuggled closer to him. ‘I remember every last detail,’ she said. ‘I think even when I’m a little old lady I’ll remember it.’

As the train chugged away from Victoria Station that evening, Rosie leaned out of the window and blew frantic farewell kisses to Thomas. But all too soon he was out of sight. She closed the window and sunk down on to the seat. She was glad she didn’t have to share the compartment in case someone tried to hold a conversation with her. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts and savour the last twenty-four hours.

It had been the best day in her life. They’d eaten breakfast by the fire in Thomas’s living-room, then gone for a walk on Hampstead Heath. Everywhere looked so special, the trees in their autumn colouring, the children sailing boats on Whitestone Pond, nannies in uniform out wheeling their charges in big prams, other couples like them wandering hand in hand. Later they had gone into Jack Straw’s Castle and had a couple of drinks before going back to Flask Walk for more love-making.

Thomas was very concerned that they hadn’t taken any precautions against her getting pregnant. Rosie didn’t care one bit if a baby had already got started last night, but she was touched that Thomas cared enough to insist they were more careful in future.

They’d eaten sandwiches in bed, and between love-making they had talked and talked. For the first time he spoke dreamily about his hopes that the exhibition would be a success, and that one day he might only do clock-mending for pleasure.

‘I want the same as you,’ he whispered as they lay face to face on the pillows. ‘A little cottage with roses round the door. A garden with a stream running through it. I want babies of our own, but room for Donald to come and stay. Maybe one day Alan will come and look us up too.’

‘It sounds like heaven,’ she said, smiling at his serious face and tracing the fine lines around his eyes.

‘That dream kept me going when I was in the camp,’ he said. ‘I used to visualize every piece of furniture, every inch of the garden. But the girl in my dream never had a face. I tried to give her one, I thought of every film star, of girls I knew back home and ones I’d met in Singapore. But the faces never stayed, no matter how hard I concentrated.’

‘Does my face stay?’

‘That’s when I knew I’d fallen in love,’ he said with a sweet smile. ‘I found myself lapsing into the dream again around the time you first went to work for Norah and Frank. Suddenly it was you there with me in that cottage. Each time I came down to Mayfield and you spoke about Gareth, your gardening and that little cottage you wanted, I felt so sad. You seemed to share my dream, but you had the wrong man beside you.’

‘Did you always know he was wrong for me?’

‘No, not really. I wasn’t struck on him, but at first I thought he was good for you. You gained confidence and extra sparkle. I was happy for you, I really hoped it would work. But as time went on I could see the flaws. You see, he wanted a very ordinary girl, someone he could mould into what he wanted.’

‘And I’m not ordinary?’ Rosie’s eyes widened.

‘No, you aren’t. You’re just like those moors you come from, wild, fascinating, full of mystery and unexplored places. So beautiful and serene mostly, yet with a darker side too, and that’s why I find you so intriguing.’

Rosie closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the train. She thought of the Somerset Levels in high summer: waving grasses up to her waist, swans gliding along the rivers, and a grey heron standing on a bank waiting to catch its dinner. She could feel the hot sun on her arms, the cool mud under her bare feet as she paddled, and the scent of meadowsweet all around her.

She remembered her father teaching her to swim on such a day. Seth and Norman were already in the river splashing each other, both as brown as berries, water glistening on their dark skins and slicked-back hair. Her mother was sitting on the grass bank, laughing as Cole held her under the tummy and instructed her how to make her legs move like a frog. He took his hand away later, and it was some time before she realized it had gone and she was swimming alone.

All at once Rosie saw the significance of that memory. Cole had insisted that she learned to swim so young because he feared for her safety with so much water around their cottage. For years she’d thought of him as a bad father, latterly because of the crimes she believed he’d committed, and before that because he wasn’t quite like her school-friends’ fathers. But now, looking back, she saw that in many ways he was one of the best. He’d taught her how to be brave, self-reliant and appreciative of the beauty of nature.

Why did he allow Seth to go unpunished? She thought she even had the answer to that now. He loved his firstborn, he saw himself mirrored in him, and perhaps at the bitter end, when he’d discovered what Seth had done, he took the blame for his warped character entirely on to his own shoulders. Maybe he hoped his son would be man enough to confess at the last minute, or that the shock of knowing his father had been hanged for his own crimes would bring him to heel.

‘Rest in peace, Dad,’ she murmured to herself. ‘You taught me to swim and a great deal more. I can get by all on my own now, thanks to you.’

Chapter Twenty

Rosie looked reflectively around her as she made her way up the wide, thickly carpeted staircase. It was the same Piccadilly apartment building from where she’d watched the Coronation procession two and a half years earlier. Back then the opulent flocked wallpaper, red carpet, crystal lights and mahogany banisters had been her idea of an entrance to a palace. She could clearly remember a sudden attack of panic when she first saw it, instantly aware that her apple-green suit looked as cheap as it was, and that before the day was out the Cooks would regret inviting someone so common.

She could laugh about those feelings of inadequacy now, for she had no anxiety today about her appearance, nor her ability to hold her own in company, but she had a remarkably similar sensation of butterflies in her stomach, as if something momentous was about to happen. Perhaps that was just because the last visit here had been an important milestone in her life.

‘It feels really peculiar being back here again,’ she said, turning her head to Norah who was right behind her. Frank and Donald had gone ahead with their luggage.

‘It does to me too,’ Norah said with a nervous laugh, remembering the heart-stopping terror of that day. ‘I just hope Donald doesn’t run off again. But then he’s not likely to, is he?’

‘Of course he isn’t,’ Rosie said with a smile. She found it touching that Norah still relied on her for reassurance about her son. ‘And even if he did get separated from us by accident, he’s perfectly capable of asking for directions back here. You don’t need to worry about him.’

They were in London for Thomas’s exhibition, which was due to open the next day at a Hampstead gallery. Rosie had only expected to be at the Saturday opening-night party, but two weeks ago on her birthday Mrs Cook said she and her husband had another surprise for her. This was it: a whole week’s holiday in London. The Cooks were only staying for the weekend, intending to drive home on Sunday afternoon with Donald. After that she and Thomas would have the apartment entirely to themselves.

As they walked through the front door and into the large sitting-room which for so long had been the yardstick by which Rosie measured grandeur, her initial reaction was that it wasn’t quite as huge or grand as she remembered. Donald was already sprawled on one of the big settees, Mr Cook looking out of the window at the busy street below. It was of course just the same – the thick carpets as sumptuous, the ornaments and paintings as exquisite. She could still see her face mirrored in the rosewood table, and the curtains she’d once considered big enough to cover every single window in May Cottage with enough left to make a ball gown were every bit as fabulous as she’d thought then. The difference was only within her. She’d become accustomed to luxury.

By five o’clock it was dark outside. The traffic along Piccadilly was growing heavier and noisier, while office workers and shoppers were flocking into Green Park tube station to go home. Rosie lingered at the sitting-room windows before she drew the curtains. Frank had taken Donald along the road to Fortnum and Mason to buy some extra treats for the weekend. Norah was out in the kitchen unpacking a box of groceries she’d brought from home, and Rosie was glad of a few moments alone.