“But Pa has to have the use of his right arm and hand,” Noel said at last, as if somehow she, and Dr Todd, had not understood the obvious. “He’s an artist. You did tell Dr Todd that, didn’t you? I mean, Dr Todd does know, doesn’t he?”
Lizzie couldn’t speak. To speak would have been to break down completely.
Slowly, with terrible finality, understanding dawned in the three pairs of eyes holding hers.
“No!“ Noel roared, catapulting to his feet so violently that his chair fell over backwards. “Jesus God! NO!”
No one had ever heard such a profanity uttered in their house before. No one cared.
Nina choked, pressing her hands to her mouth. Rose’s monkey face was all sharp angles, as if the skin had been pulled tightly up and over her cheek bones.
Lizzie passed a hand across her eyes, waves of panic beating up into her throat. Should she tell them what the consequences of Laurence’s stroke were going to be? It was obvious that they hadn’t, as yet, thought out what his inability to work was going to mean for them all. And when she did tell them, what then? How would they come to terms with the grim reality that was now their future?
Noel solved her dilemma for her. Spinning on his heel he rushed blindly for the back door, yanking it open with such force it rocked on its hinges. Seconds later the gate slammed after him. As his running footsteps faded into the distance up the cobbled guinnel dividing the rear gardens of Jesmond Avenue from the rear gardens of the next street, Nina began to cry in earnest.
Rose stood up unsteadily, saying in a voice as brittle as glass, “I’m going to sit with Father. And I’m going to pray. I’m going to pray very hard!“
Lizzie nodded, grateful for the stay of execution Noel’s abrupt departure had given her. She, too, was going to pray. And she was going to do something she had never done in all her married life; she was going to go through the bureau where their household papers were kept. If God was very, very good, a scrutiny of their finances might show that with frugal management they could survive without Nina or Noel having to leave art school or, at the very worst, of only one of them having to do so.
Rose sat with her father until her mother came into the parlour with a bowl of warm milk in which small pieces of white bread were soaking.
“I’m going to see if your father will eat some pobs,” she said, sitting down in Rose’s place at the side of the sofa as Rose rose to her feet. “Would you go in search of Noel for me?”
Rose nodded, saying helpfully, “Pa’s not asleep. He keeps opening his eyes and trying to talk, but his face is all lopsided and I can’t understand what he’s trying to say.” Barely suppressed tears made her voice wobbly, “And every time the words don’t come out right his eyes look frightened.“
She, too, looked frightened.
Lizzie’s heart went out to her. “It’s going to be all right, Rose,” she said gently, praying to God she was speaking the truth.
“Somehow or other we’re going to manage, and somehow or other your father will be able to communicate with us again.”
Comforted, Rose managed an unsteady smile. Of course it would be all right. How could it be otherwise when her father was still alive and they were still a close, united little family?
She found Noel down by the Bradford Beck. He was seated on its shallow grassy bank, his clasped hands hanging loosely between his bent knees as he stared sightlessly at the tumbling, gurgling water.
Rose sat down beside him. Ever since they had been small children they had loved playing in, and near, the Beck. Just a short distance from where they now were it went underground, emerging after a short distance to run behind warehouses and mills before going underground again, this time not emerging until it had run beneath the city centre and was well on its way to the River Aire, at nearby Shipley.
Everyone Rose knew referred to it affectionately as ‘t’mucky beck’, and she had never been able to understand why, because at Bull Royd, where they were now, and above Bull Royd towards Thornton and Allerton, the Beck ran like a country stream between narrow fields, its banks speckled with kingcups and marsh marigolds and ragged robin.
“It’s mucky when it reaches the mills,” her father had often said to her, “the mills pump their waste into it and have done ever since the first mills were built on its banks.”
Rimmington’s mill wasn’t built on the Beck’s banks and for that Rose had always been very glad. She would have hated Rimmington’s to have been one of the mills which disposed of its waste in such a heedless manner.
As Noel picked up a small pebble and threw it desultorily into the water, she said, “Everything’s going to be all right. Mother says so. She says Father will soon be able to communicate with us in some way or other and that—”
“How?” Noel demanded with a ferocity that made her flinch. “By sign language? By making noises like a toddler learning to talk? And what does it matter even if he is able to speak properly again, if he can’t draw and paint? What does anything matter if he can’t draw and paint anymore?”
Rose looked at his still averted head with troubled eyes. Art was so all-important to him that he couldn’t conceive it might not be equally all-important to their father, and with sudden insight Rose knew that it wasn’t so all-important to their father. Their father loved art passionately and was proud and respectful of his talent, but it had never dominated his life as it dominated Noel’s. Too many other things made their father happy. Their mother. Themselves. Sitting in the garden in the summer dusk with his pipe. Listening to the local brass band whenever it played in Lister Park. A game of draughts or Halma with her or Nina. A game of chess with Noel.
She said with utter certainty, “Lots of other things will still matter to Pa; lots of other things are precious to him. Mother. You and me. Nina.”
Noel groaned and ran a hand through his fiery hair. There were times, and this was one of them, when Rose’s ability to always think positively almost drove him to distraction.
“Why are things so simple for you, Rose?” he demanded, wishing with all his might they were so simple for himself. “You may have oodles of artistic talent but you don’t have an ounce of artistic temperament.”
Rose shrugged. She wasn’t sure she wanted an artistic temperament. All she wanted to do was to handle fabrics and design patterns for them.
She picked a daisy and twirled it round between her fingers. “Pa’s not going to be able to work anymore, is he?” she said perceptively. “And if he’s not even going to be able to get out of the house we’re going to have spend lots and lots of time with him so that he doesn’t get bored.”
Noel frowned, a sudden thought occurring to him. It was so ridiculous he shrugged it away. There would be insurances and his mother very probably had a small private income of her own.
“I’m going back home,” he said, springing to his feet. “I’m in the middle of painting a self-portrait and I’m curious how my reaction to Pa’s stroke is going to affect it. I can’t possibly look the same, can I? And even if I do, it’s not mere physical resemblance I’m after. It’s my psyche.”
Rose remained where she was. Noel didn’t need her. When his head was full of creative fervour he didn’t need anyone. As he strode off over the grass towards the crowded streets that ran down to the Beck’s fields she hugged her knees with her arms, aware that life had changed dramatically and might never be the same, ever again.
Lizzie pushed her chair away from the mahogany bureau and tucked a straying wisp of hair back into the loose knot on top of her head. It was the fifth time she had gone through their rent-book and bank-book and bills, and the conclusion was inescapable. Without Laurence’s wages from Lutterworth’s they couldn’t possibly afford to live as they had been doing. Their rent, which had once seemed reasonable, now seemed monstrous. The figures in Laurence’s bank book, instead of offering comfort, merely seemed to mock her. All their married life Laurence had earned enough to keep them in modest comfort but his income hadn�
��t been such that he had been able to amass any notable savings. He had no pension to look forward to. No sick benefit.
She rubbed her temples with her fingers, trying to ease the build-up of pressure behind her eyes. Could she take a lodger in? It would mean either her, or Nina and Rose, moving into the attic and that in turn would mean Noel no longer having a studio of any kind. And how much would a lodger bring in? Would it be enough to keep Noel and Nina from going into one of the mills? And if they did go into a mill, which mill would they go into? They couldn’t go into Rimmington’s. She would die before she allowed them to work as mill-hands in their grandfather’s mill. And Lutterworth’s would be nearly as bad. How could they enter the weaving or spinning sheds at a mill where their father had one held such a respectable position?
She leaned her head back, stretching out her throat muscles, gazing sightless up at the prettily moulded ceiling. There was one solution to the problem that would keep Noel and Nina from mill work, but it was so extreme, would have been previously so utterly unthinkable, that she didn’t know how she would be able to confront Noel and Nina with it. Rose, she knew, would immediately see the sense of it and adapt willingly and with sunny cheerfulness. Noel, too, as long as he was able to continue with his Fine Art studies, might very well be understanding about it. But Nina would certainly not be understanding. Nina would be devastated. Her heart hurt as she thought of the distress that was going to be caused whatever the action she took. In the end, all she could do was set the choice before them. She only hoped that when it came to making it, they would be unanimous in their decision.
“Do you like this idea for a ladies evening shirt?” Nina asked Rose that evening when they had cleared the table and washed and dried the dishes together. Their mother was in the parlour with their father. Noel was in his makeshift studio. She passed her sketch pad across to Rose. “It’s to be worn over a skirt and it would be cut like a djibbah and edged at the hem and neck with braid.”
“What’s a djibbah?” Rose asked, interested.
“It’s a loose-sleeved garment they wear in the Middle East.”
Rose was impressed. When it came to clothes, there was hardly anything Nina didn’t know.
“And would you make it out of silk?”
Nina shook her head, her titian hair tumbling so thick and loose around her shoulders that she looked as if she had just stepped from a Burne-Jones painting.
“No,” she said, removing the sketch pad from Rose’s hand and beginning to pencil in the braid, “chiffon. I thought it would look best in a really glorious searing pink. Or maybe a patterned chiffon. Pink and orange or pink and purple.”
Rose nodded in approval. There wasn’t a wool-man’s wife in a fifty-mile radius of Bradford who would be seen in anything so Orientally exotic, but the clientèle Nina dreamed of dressing wouldn’t be wool-men’s wives. They would be society women; maybe even French or Italian society women, or even New York society women.
The door clicked open and their mother walked into the kitchen. “Would you ask Noel to come down?” she asked Nina, her high-cheek-boned face pale and strained. “There’s something I want to say to you all.”
“It might be best to leave it till tomorrow,” Nina said, still sketching and not looking up. “You know how Noel hates being disturbed when a piece of work is going well, and this latest self-portrait is going well, it’s—”
“I want Noel down her, now,” Lizzie said, such an odd expression in her voice that Nina’s head jerked upward, her eyes meeting her mother’s eyes in blank astonishment.
“I’ll go.” Rose pushed her chair hastily away from the table. She’d never heard her mother speak in that tone of voice before. Not ever.
Before Nina could protest she scampered from the room. Perhaps Dr Todd had been back to see their father when they hadn’t been around. Perhaps he had made a fresh diagnosis. Perhaps their father was going to go into hospital after all.
“Go away, I’m busy,” Noel said, standing before his easel in his old painting clothes, a much-used palette in one hand, a brush in the other.
“Mother wants you,” Rose said, panting slightly after her hurried climb up the steep attic stairs. “I think it’s about Pa and I think it’s very important. She looked very … taut.“
Noel sucked his breath in between his teeth in frustration. He loved his mother dearly but, being a Rimmington, she didn’t truly understand what being an artist meant. She seemed to think a creative urge was something that could be turned on, or off, like a tap. He wondered if Van Gogh had ever been similarly plagued by his family. If he had, it was no wonder he’d gone mad.
“I’m coming,” he said, curbing his irritation with difficulty and putting his palette and brush down on the nearest available, cluttered surface. “I can’t imagine what can be so important, though. We’ve all come to terms with Pa’s condition, haven’t we? We all know it’s going to be a long slow haul before there’s any improvement. I thought if I could finish a really grand piece of work it would buck him up no end.”
“It will,” Rose said as she clattered down the drugget-covered stairs in his wake. “He’s taking much more of an interest in things now and he’s stopped looking so frightened when he tries to speak and only makes funny sounds. Ma told him he had to make funny sounds because we would all soon begin to understand what he meant by them. While you’re downstairs you should look at Neen’s latest dress design. It looks like something out of the Arabian Nights.”
They burst into the kitchen, Noel with paint splodges on his face and hands, his hair standing up in tousled spikes where he had run his fingers through it.
“Rose said you wanted a word with me,” he said to Lizzie, straddling a wooden kitchen chair and resting his folded elbows on its back.
“I wanted a word with all of you.” Lizzie looked round at her dearly-loved, oh so talented children. “This isn’t going to be easy, my loves. It’s going to be very, very difficult.”
Nina put her sketch pad down on the table, more bewildered than ever. Noel wondered if the radically different, more loosely applied brushwork he was now practising expressed inner emotion in the way he intended it to. What he was after was an effect of tension between the image depicted and the paint on the picture’s surface. If he perhaps used a far more crude and violent colour tone …
“There simply isn’t going to be the money to continue living as we have been doing,” Lizzie said gravely, breaking in on his thoughts. “The rent on the house is considerable and over and above that, we have to have money for day-to-day living expenses. If your Father is unable to work again …”
They all three stared at her with rapt attention, waiting to hear what the solution would be. An insurance policy, Noel thought, his thoughts again straying to the possibility of applying non-natural colour in his self-portrait. If he did so, his self-portrait would look even more distorted and, in doing so, would hopefully express his inner emotions in a much more direct manner.
“Whatever money Grandmother Rimmington left Mother when she died,” Nina thought, wondering if she could take her Oriental theme even further by designing daring ‘harem’ trousers. They would be worn beneath a skirt, of course, and be just visible.
“If Pa can’t work, perhaps we’ll have to,” Rose thought, her tummy muscles knotting tightly and giving her a queasy feeling. It would mean no art school for her and if she didn’t go to art school, how could she ever achieve her dreams?
“If your father is unable to work again,” Lizzie repeated, her clasped hands tightening until the knuckles showed white, “then we are going to have to drastically reorganize the way we live.”
There was silence.
At last Nina said perplexedly, “I’m sorry, Mother, I don’t quite understand. In what way will be have to reorganize how we live? I know Father’s going to need a lot of care, but—”
“We’re going to have to go out to work, aren’t we?” The speaker was Rose. There was no horrified disbelief in h
er voice, only troubled acceptance. After all, if their father couldn’t work any more, someone would have to, and it was obvious that their mother couldn’t, for their mother would need to be home in order to nurse their father.
With a violent exclamation Noel sprang to his feet, running his hands through his already chaotic hair. “For the Lord’s sake, stop talking rubbish, Rose! If Ma could just explain what she means by our having to reorganize our lives …”
“I mean that there is not enough money for you to continue at art school and that—”
“No!” Nina pushed her chair sharply back from the table, her eyes so panic-stricken she looked almost deranged. “I won’t leave art school! I can’t!” Her voice was shrill with rising hysteria. “I’m going to be a dress designer! You and Father have always agreed I should become a dress designer! How can I ever become one if I have to work in a shop …”
Her voice tailed off in stupefied horror. In a gesture straight from Greek tragedy she clasped her throat with both hands. “You don’t intend for me to work in a shop, do you?” The pupils in her green cat-eyes had widened so much the irises could barely be seen. “Shop girls don’t earn enough money, do they? You mean for me to work in a mill – and for Noel to work in a mill as well!”
Noel made a strangled, choking sound. Rose’s eyes remained fixed on her mother’s. She could tell that her mother had more she wanted to say to them. Perhaps she was going to explain an alternative. Perhaps …
“There must be some Rimmington money somewhere!” Noel’s voice was barely recognizable, hoarse with naked fear. “I mean, when Grandma Rimmington died you went to the funeral, didn’t you, Ma? You and Grandma Rimmington never fell out, did you? And Grandma Rimmington must have had some money of her own and left you a bequest in her will!”
Rose could almost feel Nina holding her breath – and she knew that Nina was wasting her time. For anyone with eyes to see, the anguish on their mother’s face was answer enough to Noel’s question.
Yorkshire Rose Page 5
