And Walter, not man enough to defy his father, had married well. His bride had been a Harland, and the Harlands of Sutton Place, North Yorkshire, were one of the county’s oldest and most prestigious families.
“Noel may move to London, too,” Nina continued, handing Polly the enamel mug, assuming that Polly was satisfied with the thinness of her pastry and was waiting for it. “Some of his paintings are to be shown in a London exhibition.”
Polly forced her thoughts back to the present. “So your mother has been telling me,” she said, pressing the rim of the upturned mug onto the pastry and skewering it lightly. “She’s very proud of him. But then,” she added, lifting the mug in order to skewer a second pastry ring, “she’s very proud of all of you, and so she should be.”
Nina had long ago ceased to think of the Wilkinsons as being common, or to fear that contact with them would give her nits. “I wanted to say goodbye to Jenny as well,” she said now, knowing with rising excitement that it was time to return to number twenty-six; that her uncle might already be there, waiting for her, “but as she isn’t here, will you say goodbye to her for me?”
“Of course I will love, and you just …”
Heavy male footsteps rang out in the echoing passageway.
Polly had been about to tell Nina to take care and to look after herself, especially if she went to London, but the words died on her lips.
She knew those footsteps. They were footsteps she had thought never to hear again. Footsteps that had once been the dearest to her in all the world.
“The door!” she said in panic-stricken urgency to Rose, who was the nearest to it. “Shut it, Rose! Shut it now!”
Startled, Rose rose to her feet. That Polly wanted the door closing before the approaching visitor should emerge from the passageway to find it open, was obvious, but why? Except in the depths of winter, doors were always left open or ajar in Beck-Side Street and unwelcome callers, apart from tallymen, were unknown.
Convinced that the approaching footsteps were those of someone coming in order to try and collect rent money, or for clothes bought on credit, Rose sprang to do Polly’s bidding.
She was seconds too late.
As her fingers closed around the door knob the approaching visitor rounded the end of the passageway, standing full square in the open doorway in front of her, a genial smile on his face.
The tension fled from Rose’s body. “Uncle Walter!” Her husky voice was thick with giggles of relief. “We thought you were a tallyman!”
Walter was vastly amused. He was beginning to enjoy his visits to Beck-Side Street and his forays into a lifestyle so very different to his own. A tallyman indeed! Next thing he knew he’d be taken for a bailiff!
“Your mother said Nina was saying goodbye to your friend’s mother,” he said with jovial bonhomie, “she didn’t want me to come round, but I thought it only …”
The words died away. As other footsteps, Lizzie’s footsteps, came running after him through the passageway, he stared beyond Rose to the slender, petite figure standing at the table in the centre of the little room, a cheap enamel mug clutched in her hands, a dusting of flour on one cheek.
“Polly?” the incredulous whisper was barely audible.
Rose’s eyes shot wide. Uncertainly, not sure if she had heard right, she stepped to one side so that Polly was more clearly in her uncle’s view.
“Polly?” he said again, his smile gone, not a trace of bonhomie remaining. “Is it really you? Why didn’t Lizzie say … why didn’t…?”
He swayed slightly, putting one hand on the cold stone of the house wall to steady himself.
Rose’s Pekingese eyes widened still further. Nina stared from her uncle to her mother’s friend, her jaw hanging open. How could her uncle possibly know Polly Wilkinson? Polly was a weaver. Her social world consisted of Beck-Side Street, the mill, an occasional tram ride into the centre of Bradford to shop at Kirkgate Market, and an even more occasional day out on Shipley Glen or Ilkley Moor. How, in the name of all that was wonderful, could her uncle possibly be on first name terms with her?
All the rosy colour had drained from Polly’s cheeks. Unsteadily she set the mug down on the table and as she did so Lizzie rounded the end of the covered passage, coming to a breathless halt beside Walter, saying with fraught anxiety, “I’m sorry, Polly. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen …”
Polly wasn’t listening to her either.
As Rose and Nina watched goggle-eyed she stepped from behind her kitchen table and walked towards their poleaxed uncle, her arms welcomingly outstretched, her voice unsteady with emotion as she said, “Hello, Walter love. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Would you like to come in for a cup of tea? Would you like to make yourself at home?”
Chapter Eight
“And he has made himself at home there,” Harry said wryly, “because Mrs Wilkinson refuses absolutely to even visit Crag-Side.”
It was May of the following year. Nina and Noel were both back in Yorkshire for a few days, Nina on end of term holiday from St Martin’s and Noel because some of his paintings were on show in a Leeds exhibition and he wanted to enjoy in person the acclaim they were receiving.
“Thank goodness,” Lottie said fervently. “Can you imagine the embarrassment if she were to visit here?”
She had just finished playing a game of mixed doubles with Noel, Nina and Harry, and was now lying exhaustedly flat on her back on the smooth grass beside the tennis-court.
“That should be the least of your worries,” Harry said teasingly, sitting Indian-fashion, his white-trousered legs crossed at the ankle. “It’s what would happen if Father were to marry her that should really be concerning you.”
Lottie gave a cry of horror and sat up abruptly. Rose, her arms hugging her knees, a wide-brimmed cream straw sunhat shielding her freckle-prone skin from the sun, said crossly, “What would it matter? Why can’t you be pleased for them? Your father is happy. It should be patently obvious to everyone by now that Polly isn’t a gold-digger. If they want to marry, why shouldn’t they?”
“Oh Lord, not this old subject again,” Nina said wearily, pushing herself up one elbow and reaching for a nearby jug of iced lemon squash. “If it isn’t obvious to you now, Rose, that Polly Wilkinson as mistress of Crag-Side would be a social disaster of the highest order, for all of us, then I despair, I really do.”
From under the thick sweep of her lashes she looked across at William. He was being as silent and unforth-coming as ever, but he surely couldn’t be indifferent to the prospect of his father marrying Polly? Or could he? She suppressed a sigh of intense irritation. All in all, William was proving to be a great disappointment. Despite all her efforts to engage his interest he stubbornly refused to show her anything but cousinly affection. Harry, on the other hand, was wild about her and always had been. But Harry was not heir to Crag-Side and to the mill, and it was Crag-side she ached and yearned for.
“Lottie and Harry and William would be better off with Polly as a stepmother than with anyone else Uncle Walter might marry,” Rose said stubbornly, hating the affected way of speaking Nina had adopted since becoming a student at St Martin’s. “She‘s happy-natured and kind and—”
“And she’s a mill worker,” Lottie said with what she felt was saintly patience. “I appreciate that she’s your friend’s mother, and a neighbour, and that you’re fond of her, Rose, but Papa would be a laughing-stock if he were to marry her. And so would we.”
William poured himself a glass of squash from the jug and said with an odd edge to his voice, “What are you most worried about, Lottie? That Mrs Wilkinson will insist on wearing clogs and a shawl at Crag-Side, or that she’ll speak to the servants in a broad Yorkshire accent?”
Rose, aware that his sarcasm was a way of showing solidarity with her, flashed him a look of gratitude.
Harry tensed, hoping to God William wasn’t about to reveal to the Sugdens that he, too, was in love with a mill worker.
&n
bsp; Nina’s stomach muscles tightened. She had been right to suspect that William was indifferent to the prospect of his father’s marrying Polly. Why he should take such an attitude was, however, a complete mystery to her as were a lot of other things about him. This time she didn’t even attempt to suppress her sigh of irritation. In the six months she had been attending St Martin’s she had acquired a gloss of worldly sophistication which had altered her attitude to a lot of things.
Rose, for instance. She no longer felt as close and mentally in tune with Rose. How could she, when Rose insisted not only on remaining with their parents in Beck-Side Street, but on counting Jenny Wilkinson and Micky Porritt her closest friends? As for William … She had had such hopes where William was concerned, but they were hopes that were fast fading.
As Rose began to tediously point out to Lottie that Polly Wilkinson’s accent was little broader than the way she, Rose, talked, Nina sipped at the glass of lemon squash she had poured herself and eyed her eldest cousin covertly. He was pleasant looking, but not excessively so. He didn’t have the blatant masculinity of some of the young men she had met whilst in London. Young men like Rupert Winterton. Young men with London panache and style. Harry did, though. Harry had enough self-confidence and what her Bohemian college friends called ‘chutzpah’, to set the Thames alight.
“And I live in Beck-Side Street and fit in at Crag-Side,” Rose was saying, refusing to let the subject drop.
Nina raised her eyes to heaven and looked across to see what Noel was making of Rose’s idiocy. He was asleep, his hands behind his head, his spiky red hair as untidy as a child’s.
“Yes, but you haven’t always lived in Beck-Side Street,” Lottie was pointing out, trying to be as fair as possible to her best-loved cousin, “and Mrs Wilkinson has.”
Without turning her head away from Noel, Nina was aware that Harry was looking towards her. She felt an odd sensation in the pit of her stomach. Harry was even more blatantly handsome than Rupert Winterton, but if she were to encourage Harry, even the hope of one day engaging William’s interest would be lost to her for ever.
Languidly, as if he were the furthest thing from her mind, she set her glass back down on the grass and turned her head slightly to meet his gaze.
His eyes burned hers, sending shooting stabs of excitement into parts of her body she barely knew existed.
“… at least Polly wouldn’t try and impose her will on you all,” Rose was saying with dogged persistence.
Affecting the same indifference with which she had looked towards him, Nina outwardly transferred her attention back to the conversation taking place between Rose and Lottie, a flush of heat staining her cheeks, her pulses racing. Even though she had allowed Rupert Winterton to kiss her, the effect had been nothing like the mere effect of Harry’s eyes. As for William … she looked towards his tall, rather angular figure, and knew that even if he was head over heels in love with her, he would never in a million years be able to arouse such a response in her.
“We’re never going to see eye to eye on this Rose, so let’s talk about something we can agree on,” Lottie said practically, her waist-length, near-blonde hair shining like spun silk in the hot sunlight. “And that is where the best point is going to be for viewing the Coronation. Papa says outside Westminster Abbey, but Noel says there is to be a procession down The Strand and that we stand a much better chance of having a good view of King George and Queen Mary from there.”
Nina rose to her feet, the swirl of her narrowly pleated ankle-length tennis skirt emphasizing her natural grace. “It’s a pity the London house is on the wrong side of the river. It won’t be on the route of any procession and we’d have had a super view from the third-floor windows.”
Noel flicked one eye open. “The third floor is my studio,” he said dryly, still laying with his hands behind his head, “and even if it overlooked the Abbey itself I’d rather a herd of stampeding elephants invaded it than you and your friends.”
Beneath the casual way they spoke of the house their uncle had rented for their convenience in London, their joy over it was hard to hide. Overlooking Battersea Park, its top floor had been converted into a studio and a motherly resident housekeeper kept an eagle eye on them. Or at least their uncle assumed she did. Nina thought again of Rupert Winterton’s kiss and was aware she was being allowed an unconscionable amount of freedom for a girl still a month away from being eighteen; a girl who, only six months ago, had travelled little further than the outskirts of Bradford and had been living in a back-to-back in Beck-Side Street.
Noel was feigning sleep again and she said to everyone, carefully avoiding Harry’s eyes, “The sun’s too hot. I’m going to go inside for a while.”
William made a non-committal noise, deep in thoughts of Sarah.
Lottie said, “I’m not coming in till I’ve played a game with Rose. She hasn’t a clue about the rules and yet she always seems to win.”
Rose, the slights that had been made about Polly still rankling, said tartly, “I don’t know the rules because until you put the nets up last month, I’d never played. We don’t have tennis-courts in Beck-Side Street.”
Harry, knowing that neither Lottie or Rose would give up their verbal battle until each believed they were the winner, grinned. Ever since the day of their grandfather’s funeral Lottie and Rose had been as thick as thieves, Lottie’s only constant complaint being that Rose stubbornly refused to make Crag-Side her home.
He turned slightly, looking over his shoulder, watching Nina as she walked towards the house, her skirt fluttering beguilingly around her legs, the sailor collar of her hip length white tennis shirt giving her a nautical air. His grin deepened. He wondered if she had ever been sailing. He wondered what would happen if the two of them were to find themselves aboard a small boat together, with no one else within hailing distance and land a long way away.
“We play rounders in Beck-Side Street,” Rose said, rising to her feet and picking up Nina’s discarded racket. “Perhaps we could mark out a rounders pitch on the terrace. It’s big enough.”
Harry, his eyes still on Nina as she began to climb the terrace steps, stood up, picking up his racket as he did so. “I think Nina’s right about the sun,” he said in the dark, rich voice that so added to his attractiveness, “I’m going in as well, and if I were you Rose, I’d keep your sun hat on while you’re playing. You don’t want a touch of sunstroke.”
Rose shot him a swift, happy smile. Though Harry hadn’t voiced his opinion when she had been arguing with Lottie over Polly, she knew that if Polly and his father were to marry, he would make no objection.
In the days immediately after their grandfather’s funeral all the Rimmingtons had, at one time or another, visited Beck-Side Street. Lottie had regarded her visit as an adventure, but not an adventure she had wanted to repeat. William had been surprisingly keen to visit often, going out of his way to establish friendly relations with her father and to exchange politely awkward pleasantries with the likes of Gertie Graham and Albert Porritt. It had been Harry, though, who had effortlessly fitted in amongst her Beck-Side Street neighbours.
He had shown a genuine interest in Albert’s much loved horse. He had rough-housed with a deliriously responsive Bonzo. He had responded to Gertie in her own coin and Gertie’s bellying laughter had been heard nearly as far away as Bull Royd. He had met Polly, sensitively making no reference to the fact that he knew of her relationship with his father, knowing that it would deeply embarrass her if he did so. Jenny had been shy of him, but had liked him. Only Micky had persisted in being annoyingly hostile towards him.
“Come on,” Lottie said impatiently, breaking in on her reverie, “as I’ve already played a game of doubles and you haven’t, I suppose you’ll beat me again, but it isn’t fair. I’ve had tennis tuition, for goodness sake. What my coach would say if he knew you were beating me every time we played, heaven only knows!”
As the sound of Rose’s first serve sounded distantly behind him,
Harry took the terrace steps two at a time in swift, easy strides. Nina was no longer in sight but he was fairly sure where he would find her. Even before she had left Crag-Side for London her favourite retreat had always been the winter garden and even now, despite the heat, it was still the pleasantest corner of Crag-Side, for its main decorative feature was a coolly splashing fountain.
Minutes later he entered the winter garden’s glaucously green, lily-scented interior and came to an abrupt halt, sucking his breath in sharply.
She was seated on the fountain’s bronze rim and as her eyes met his he knew that he had not taken her by surprise, but that she had excused herself from the others knowing full well that he would follow her; that she had wanted him to follow her. His throat tightened, the blood surging through his body in a hot tide. During their absence from each other he had had plenty of time to consider the wisdom of embarking on a passionate relationship with her. She was, after all, family. If the relationship should come to an end he couldn’t simply walk away from her, never seeing her again. There would be all sorts of difficulties and embarrassments. And he didn’t care about them. He didn’t care about them because he didn’t believe they would ever arise. It wasn’t a passing crush he felt for Nina. It was an infatuation deep enough to last a lifetime.
Slowly he propped his tennis racket against the open door and began to walk towards her. Her eyes holding his, she rose to her feet, knowing he was going to kiss her; knowing that she wanted him to kiss her; knowing that she had wanted him to kiss her ever since she had first set eyes on him as he had hunkered down outside Brown Muff’s, helping Rose to retrieve her portfolio case.
He came to a halt in front of her, so near that the back of her legs were pressing against cold, hard bronze.
“There’ll be no going back, you know that, don’t you?” His eyes burned hers, the tension between them so taut it seemed to crackle like electricity.
Yorkshire Rose Page 12
