Sweet Rosie (40 page)

‘I have left him, Mam,’ Rosie said firmly. ‘The marriage was a mistake, you know that as well as I do.’ She bit her lip trying to hold back the tears. Pearl touched her hand awkwardly.

‘Buck up, love, nothing is ever as black and white as it seems, mind.’ She patted Rosie’s work-roughened hand and sat back in her chair. ‘Just try again, that’s all I’m saying. Love can grow, see, every woman knows that in her heart.’

Rosie sighed heavily, swallowing the hard lump in her throat. ‘I can’t fight a ghost, Mam,’ she said. ‘Now, let’s do a bit of shopping, Mrs Sparks has actually handed over some of the wages she owes me.’ She smiled. ‘It was like getting blood out of a stone, mind. Mrs Sparks said I would have to wait but when I pointed out that I got less than most servants and did the work of three she gave in.’

‘All right,’ Pearl said. ‘Shopping it is.’

It was about an hour later, when Rosie was laden with parcels and heartily sick of shopping, that she realized her mother was lagging behind. She turned to see Pearl leaning against the wall, her parcels scattered over the road.

‘Mam!’ Rosie said in panic. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I feel so queer.’ Pearl was white, sweating, and Rosie was suddenly frightened. She looked round for help but the street was empty. Rosie put her arm around her mother’s shoulder in an effort to support her but Pearl’s eyes were turning up in her head and, slowly, she slipped to the ground in a dead faint.

‘Mam!’ Rosie was terrified. ‘Mam, what’s wrong with you?’

‘Rosie?’ The voice was familiar and Rosie looked up with a sense of relief as Llinos Mainwaring and Mr Morton-Edwards came hurrying towards her. Eynon Morton-Edwards crouched down and lifted Pearl’s head, putting his hand against her face.

‘She’s sick,’ he said. ‘I’ll get my carriage, we’ll take her to the infirmary.’

‘No, not the infirmary,’ Rosie said, ‘people die in there. Take us back to Greenhill, please.’

It was strange travelling along the familiar streets but Rosie scarcely looked out of the window. She realized her mother was seriously ill; her face was gaunt, her hair almost white now. She bit her lip; why had she not been there to help her mother when she needed her?

Watt must have heard the carriage stop outside the door. He stepped out onto the cobbles and sized up the situation at once. ‘I’ll take her.’ He carried Pearl into the parlour and put her down on the old horsehair sofa.

‘Fetch some pillows and a blanket, Rosie,’ he said. ‘And, Llinos, thanks for your help. Can you stay a few minutes more while I go for the doctor?’

‘No need,’ Llinos replied. ‘Eynon has anticipated you, he’s sent the coach driver straight down to Broad Street to fetch Dr Stafford.’

Rosie put the pillows behind her mother’s head and stared into her pale face. Pearl had not opened her eyes since she had been brought into the house. Rosie felt as if she were in a nightmare world as she waited for the doctor to arrive.

Pearl’s eyes flickered and opened. ‘Mam, are you all right?’ Rosie held her mother’s hand, praying that the doctor would be quick. Pearl did not reply; she simply stared sightlessly upwards. Rosie began to cry and Watt put his arm around her.

‘Don’t, Rosie, it will be all right, you’ll see,’ he said gently. She shrugged him away, lost in misery. If anything happened to Mam, she would never forgive herself.

When the doctor came, he ushered them all out of the room. Rosie’s brothers were standing in the kitchen, eyes downcast. ‘Is Mam going to be all right, Rosie?’ Dom asked shakily.

‘Of course she is!’ Rosie spoke with more assurance than she felt. ‘Mam’s as tough as old boots, you know that as well as I do.’ She bustled around the kitchen. ‘Come on, all of you, let’s get some supper done, shall we? Dom, you go fetch some wood in for the fire, right, boy?’

It was strange to be in the old kitchen, seeing familiar dishes, bringing the bread out of the basket hanging in the pantry. In some ways it was as though she had never left. It almost seemed she was a child again. But she had grown up. She was a married woman, married and separated from her husband in a matter of a few short months. She was servant now to Mrs Alice Sparks, wife of the bank manager.

‘
Duw!
’ She stopped in horror; Alice would be expecting her back by now. There was tea to cook and cleaning to be finished.

She caught Dom’s arm. ‘Take a message to Mrs Sparks for me, love,’ she said. ‘Just explain that our mam is sick and I must stay to look after her.’ Rosie began to wash up the dishes that had stood congealed with fat from breakfast time, then she scrubbed the boards of the table until they gleamed white. She could see that no cleaning had been done since she left home.

She lifted her head as she heard the doctor speaking to Watt near the front door. She moved nearer to listen.

‘A blood clot on the brain,’ the doctor was saying. ‘Very little hope, I’m afraid.’

Rosie heard the words but knew they could not be true, Mam was strong as a horse; she worked in the pottery along with the other women, some of them older than she was. Mam was indestructible.

Watt came and took the scrubbing brush from her hands. ‘Come in to your mother, Rosie.’

She shook her head, frightened to face the truth. So long as she did not see her mother die, it would not be happening. Watt led her to the parlour and Rosie noticed that Llinos and Eynon Morton-Edwards were still waiting in the doorway.

Her mother was fully conscious now, her eyes focused, frightened. One corner of Pearl’s mouth was drawn down and her left hand lay useless, dangling over the edge of the sofa.

‘Mam.’ Rosie knelt beside her. ‘Come on, Mam, you can get better, you have to get better, I need you.’

Pearl tried to speak but the words would not come. She took a ragged breath and tried again. ‘The boys, look out for them, promise me.’ Her good hand gripped Rosie’s. ‘Promise!’

‘I promise, Mam, but you will be all right, you’ll see, you’ve been working too hard, a bit of a rest and you’ll be back to your old self.’

Sadly, Pearl shook her head. ‘Tell Willie . . .’ Her voice faded, the light went out of her eyes and her hand in Rosie’s went limp.

‘Mammy!’ Rosie wailed. She was a little girl again, wanting her mam. She would never have her mam again. Her mam was dead.

Alice was angry with Rosie; how dare the girl treat her this way? This is what came of spoiling servants, giving them money to spend. With pockets full of money they lost all sense of responsibility.

Her irritation increased when she heard the knock on her door. The knocking was repeated and with a sigh, she heaved herself out of her chair. A young boy stood on the step, his hair tousled over his forehead.

‘What do you want?’ Alice said crossly. The boy moved from one foot to the other, his eyes wide with misery. ‘Speak, boy! If you are begging, forget it! I do not have money to give away, understand?’

‘No, miss, I’m not begging, miss, it’s my mam, she’s sick, see.’ He chewed his lip and Alice stared at him wondering what he was babbling on about.

‘What’s that to me?’ Alice said a little more gently. ‘I’m sorry if your mother is ill but why have you come here?’

‘Rosie, miss, she sent me. She can’t come, see because she got to stay and mind my mam.’

It begun to dawn on Alice that he was telling her she had no maid to cook and clean, no-one to make supper for Edward when he came home. Damn Edward, he must be working late again at the bank. She looked past the boy and along the street, there was no sign of Edward’s thin figure, why was he not here when she needed him?

She looked down at the boy again, he was pale, his face filled with fear. The children moved in her womb and Alice pressed her hand to her stomach. What if her sons should ever be this miserable?

‘What’s your name, boy?’

‘Dom, miss.’

‘Well come in, Dom, I’ll give you some things to take up to your mother.’ The boy followed her reluctantly, he was probably overawed by his surroundings. Rosie’s family lived in a poor district of Greenhill in a two-up, two-down cottage with very little in the way of luxury.

Alice took a basket from the pantry and put a fresh loaf and some butter in it. Perhaps she should send the bit of ham left on the bone, it might come in useful for soup or some such thing. As an afterthought, she added some eggs.

‘There, take this carefully and don’t spill it.’ She suddenly felt the warmth of being charitable to someone less fortunate. ‘And tell Rosie I’m sorry about your mother but she must come back tonight to cook the supper, I’m depending on her.’

As the boy hurried away, Alice turned to look up the street again and there, to her relief, was Edward, a newspaper under his arm, his cane in his hand, looking his usual pompous self even from a distance. He would expect a meal when he came indoors but he would just have to wait; there was nothing she could do about it until Rosie came home.

Edward entered the house and threw the paper down on the table. ‘Look at this!’ His voice was sharp, his nostrils pinched, a sure sign that he was displeased. Alice shook her head.

‘I’m not interested in the paper, Edward, I have more pressing problems to think about.’

He shook out the broadsheet and showed her the picture set in the middle of the page. She recognized it at once. ‘Good heavens it’s me!’ True her features had been exaggerated: her nose was sharper, her mouth fuller and her figure, well, she looked like a baby elephant, her pregnancy depicted as an obscene bulge.

‘How dare they do this to me?’ she asked incredulously.

‘Read the caption.’ He pointed with a lean finger and Alice took the newspaper from him. She had not been named but the drawing was unmistakably of her. At one side of the picture was a caricature of Edward, true to life in his tight-lipped spareness. And on the other a good likeness of Eynon holding a lead attached to her neck. The printed words accompanying the drawing leapt before her eyes. ‘Good wife or a rich man’s whore?’

Beneath it, the piece went on to tell of a supposedly fictitious woman who was married but had been seen frequenting the house of a wealthy bachelor from the higher orders.

‘How do you explain this?’ Edward demanded. He was white to his lips, his eyes mere slits in his face.

‘I deny it absolutely!’ Alice said. ‘I am not invited to visit anyone in the area as well you know.’ She stared at him. ‘The only visit I paid to Mr Morton-Edwards was to ask him for help. Had I not done so you would have been dismissed from your job, have you forgotten that?’

‘Well maybe, but I am still not in the clear. So far nothing has been discovered, I have covered my tracks well, I am very good with figures as you know.’

‘And that is about all that can be said in your favour.’ Alice wanted to smack his smug face.

‘Do you realize I would never have been treated in this scurrilous way if I hadn’t married you? As the daughter of Dennis Carrington I was considered one of the élite. My father moves among the very best of society while you . . .’ She shrugged. ‘You must face it, Edward, you are small fry.’

She saw him frown. ‘You do realize that I’m not accepted among the successful, wealthy folk of the town because of your lowly position. No-one wants the wife of a bank manager gracing the dinner table. I married beneath me, Edward Sparks and you would do well to remember it.’

‘What I am remembering is the money you came into quite suddenly,’ he said. ‘How much exactly did you get from Morton-Edwards?’

‘Don’t be absurd!’ Alice said. ‘You are letting this rubbish upset you unnecessarily. Last week there was a picture in the paper of some other unfortunate woman, I saw it when you left the newspaper on the table.’

‘And you know who that was? It was no unfortunate woman, far from it! The picture was of Jem Boucher’s wife and no slur was cast on her good name you notice.’

‘I can’t help that, Edward.’ Alice was suddenly weary of the whole thing. ‘If you doubt my word go and see Eynon Morton-Edwards and confront him. I should think you’d get short shrift there!’

Edward subsided into a chair, his expression mutinous. ‘Anyway, where’s my supper? I’m hungry.’

‘Rosie’s not here, her mother is sick or something.’

‘Well then you will have to cook me something yourself, Alice.’ He stared at her, disapproval written across his thin face.

‘You can forage in the kitchen yourself, Edward,’ Alice said. ‘I am in far too delicate a condition to work. I have never sunk to the level of a kitchen maid, and shame on you for suggesting such a thing.’

She sank down into a chair and eased her shoes from her feet. ‘See,’ she said, ‘my ankles are swollen, I can’t stand any longer.’

Edward stormed out of the room and she heard the sound of china being slammed on the table. After a while, he returned with a plate of bread and a hunk of cheese. He sat opposite her and munched his way solidly through his meal and then helped himself to a large measure of port.

Alice realized that she had eaten nothing since early morning. She sighed and made her way into the kitchen. It was a mess; Edward had left dishes where he’d stacked them and crumbs littered the table.

Alice found some cold soup in a dish in the pantry and scooped it into a saucepan. She stood over the dying fire and did her best to warm the soup until it was edible. Suddenly, she began to cry, it had come to this: Alice, once used to a houseful of servants, had come to eating cold soup in a dowdy little kitchen. How she hated this existence. And it was Edward’s fault; he was to blame for everything.

She returned to the drawing room and stood before him hands on her hips. ‘I have had enough of you!’ she said fiercely. ‘You have no thought for your pregnant wife, do you? Well, I want you to get out of my sight and right now!’

He ignored her and shook out the paper, concealing himself behind it. Alice turned and left the room, tears of anger and frustration burning in her eyes. She would get rid of Edward by fair means or foul, even if she had to kill him to do it.