Rosie (80 page)
Rosie did laugh about some of his ideas too, but with him, not at him, and she was hungry for the job, which he liked.
‘He chose you because he believes in you,’ Charles said. ‘He knows it will be years before the garden comes to full fruition. He’ll give you every support in getting you the more exotic materials needed and the craftsmen for the building work. But the designing and the planting will be all yours, Rosie. And you deserve such a wonderful opportunity.’
Charles passed her the contract. As she bent forward to read it, he studied her with affection.
Charles had been born with the proverbial silver spoon – educated at the best schools and Oxford, he then slipped happily into his father’s law firm. He had never known a moment’s hardship in his entire life. Until he encountered Rosie and Thomas at Paul Brett’s party, he had never met anyone socially outside his own privileged set. Rosie had enchanted him that first night, because she was so vivacious, warm and funny. Thomas took a little longer to get to know: he was more reserved, an observer rather than a talker. But once Charles had broken through that reserve, he found in Thomas the friend he’d always hoped for.
He heard some gossip about Rosie’s family some months after they moved into the flat in Fitzjohn’s Avenue. It hadn’t made a scrap of difference to his affection for them, but he was intrigued, and delved around until he discovered everything about both her and Thomas’s backgrounds. That was a turning point in his understanding of the less privileged. He was faced with two such very admirable and talented people, who through some twist of fate or accident of birth had endured more pain and sorrow than he could possibly imagine.
Charles spent many a sleepless night considering how he would be now if he had returned home at the end of the war with a missing leg, to find his only relatives dead. Or what it must be like to have your father hanged, only to discover later that your brother was the guilty party. He was sure he would never have the strength of character to rebuild his life after such things.
Eventually Rosie told him the story herself. She said that secrets created a wedge between friends, and he admired her for that courage more than anything. She said she still had no idea what had happened to her other brother Norman. She had no wish to trace him either, but she hoped he’d kept out of trouble. She confided in Charles too that she hoped one day Alan would come to see her and Thomas. Charles had promised then that when the boy was sixteen, to his mind an age of reason, he would try and act as a go-between and arrange a reunion for them. Alan would be sixteen in February and Charles had every intention of carrying out his promise.
‘Sign where I’ve put the cross,’ Charles said as she came to the end of the document. ‘That is, of course, unless you’ve changed your mind.’
She just laughed and signed her name with a flourish. ‘That’s it, then,’ she said. ‘My fate is sealed.’
‘There’s the money to come yet, and all the back-breaking work,’ he said.
Rosie looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Money is a funny thing,’ she said. ‘It ceases to be of importance once you have enough. It’s the creating bit I care about.’
Charles shook his head in wonder. Money was very important to him, but he knew Rosie and Thomas didn’t think along the same lines. They would spend it as it came, travelling, having fun together, but it would never become their master. When they were gone, their children – for he was sure they would have some before long – would get a rich inheritance, not money or property, but their father’s art, the beauty of their mother’s gardens and a sense of pride. He wished he had something so priceless and permanent to leave his own children.
‘You won’t be able to start work until the weather gets better,’ Charles said. It had been the worst winter since 1947; the roads had been blocked with snow, many villages had been cut off for weeks, the mail and milk were brought in by helicopter. ‘What are you going to do until then?’
‘Lie around reading plant books,’ she laughed. ‘Pose for Thomas, cook him meals and do all the jobs I normally neglect. Once I get bored with that, I’ll hunt around to find some good statues for Arthur. But before I begin to vegetate for the rest of the winter, I want you and Julia to come out somewhere special with us.’
‘Now where would that be?’ Charles half expected her to say something like sledging, for at times she was still very much a child.
‘The Ritz,’ she said with a wide, impish grin. ‘For dinner. I’ve always wanted to go there, and you and Julia know your way around posh places.’
Charles raised an eyebrow in surprise. He and Julia often went there, but he had never imagined Rosie had such a hankering. She was in many ways a true Bohemian, far more at home with checked tablecloths and a candle stuck in a bottle.
‘Tell me why first?’ he asked.
She gave a little sigh and blushed. ‘It’s like the ultimate challenge,’ she said softly. ‘The daughter of wild Cole Parker finally making it. Can you understand that?’
Charles could. She had once told him how she used to believe she was marked for life. So she had been. Yet in many ways that curse, or affliction, whatever one called it, had also been the making of her.
‘You’re on, Rosie,’ he smiled. ‘But only on the condition that it’s my celebratory treat. Anyone can pay to eat in the Ritz. To be taken as a guest has far more kudos.’
‘What does “kudos” mean?’ she asked. Charles had a habit of using unusual words and she always questioned them.
‘It means what Arthur will have with you designing his garden. What people have when they own a Thomas Farley.’
‘Really!’ Her face lit up and she giggled. ‘Don’t be silly!’
‘Just you wait,’ he said sagely. ‘Maybe you aren’t quite there yet. But you soon will be.’
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Gerald Lockyer, retired Superintendent of the Somerset and Bath Constabulary, whose help, advice and knowledge of the police and their procedures during the fifties proved invaluable. Thanks also to
News Beat,
the Avon and Somerset Constabulary magazine, who so kindly helped put me in touch with Gerald Lockyer.
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First published 1998
Published simultaneously by Michael Joseph
Copyright © Lesley Pearse, 1998
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ISBN: 978-0-14-191069-7