Harry had rolled his eyes to heaven in pretended long-suffering patience, said yes of course they could eat in the boardroom, and wondered why on earth he hadn’t spent such a day months and months ago.
Later, as she sat beside him in the Renault and he took a long, scenic route back to Crag-Side over Baildon Moor, he felt buoyantly optimistic for the first time since Nina had rushed off back to London. It was the Coronation in a few days time. With the exception of William, they would all be together again as a family.
He increased speed and Rose gave a cry of delight as the wind tugged even more violently at her hair. He grinned, enjoying her enjoyment, suddenly certain that Nina would be looking forward to the family reunion as fiercely as he was looking forward to it. She would say she was sorry for her hysterical outburst; that she hadn’t meant the ugly things she had said; that she loved him as madly as he loved her.
He felt a rising in his crotch just imagining their reconciliation. As William had married so precipitately there was no reason why he and Nina shouldn’t marry precipitately also. It was June now. If they became engaged on Coronation Day they could be married by Christmas.
He began to whistle as the Renault plunged down towards Ilkley. By the time he and Nina married his father would, hopefully, have come to his senses over his disapproval of William and Sarah’s wedding. They would be able to have a grand wedding reception at Crag-Side, perhaps turn the winter garden into a ballroom …
Rose broke abruptly into his thoughts. “What on earth is Lottie doing waiting by the gates. Is she waiting for us, do you think? And if so, what on earth for?”
Harry slowed down, shouting out as he did so, “What the devil are you doing, Sis? Waiting for the postman?”
“No.” As the Renault came to a halt Lottie walked across to them, saying with typical bluntness, “There’s been a telegram from London. Nina is engaged to Rupert Winterton.”
Chapter Twelve
From that moment on everyone, not only Rose, was aware of a change in Harry. His careless, swashbuckling good humour became a thing of the past. There was a tautness about him, and a tension, that was almost palpable. He didn’t go to London with them for the Coronation celebrations, and he didn’t return to Oxford at the end of the summer holidays. Instead, still refusing to allow his father to make Rimmington’s over to him lock, stock and barrel, he took over its general running, driving to Bradford in the Renault early every morning and not returning until late at night.
In October, after only a few short months of flaunting a diamond that to Rose looked to be as big as the Koh-i-noor, Nina married Rupert Winterton, Duke of Strachan, in a lavish ceremoney at St Margaret’s, Westminster.
Everyone attended the wedding, even William and Sarah. “Nina is family,” William had said to Noel when Noel had expressed surprise that he was taking time off from campaigning for a seat in Bradford’s forthcoming by-election, to take Sarah to such a high-society event, “And so of course I’m going to her wedding, and Sarah will be able to cope. As for Strachan – he’s going to have to get used to the fact that he’s marrying into a very socially diverse family, and the sooner he does so, the better.”
Two of Rupert’s sisters, and Rose and Lottie, were bridesmaids. Rose hated every minute of the experience. She felt hideously disloyal to Harry and the blossom-strewn dress, with its rosy wreath and veil, made her feel like one of the Floras in Botticelli’s The Birth of Spring.
Her mother, of course, had looked wonderful. Her deep mauve costume, its skirt swirling about her still trim ankles, had been designed by Nina and with it she wore a yard-wide hat in a paler shade of mauve, its brim dripping with hothouse white roses. That she had left for the wedding from a back-street house in Bradford was unbelievable even to Rose. She looked far more elegant than the Dowager Duchess of Strachan who, as unconventional as her son, was draped in purple and red like a Roman Catholic ecclesiastical dignitary.
The reception was held in the groom’s town house, just off Park Lane. Sarah, dressed in a simply cut, love-in-the-mist blue suit, looked more bemused than overawed as she politely declined a glass of pink champagne, asking for a glass of lemonade instead.
Neither Rose nor Lottie had any intention of being so northern. “It’s called oeil-de-perdrix,” Lottie said knowledgeably as she lifted a glass from a silver tray. “Harry used to have it served at Crag-Side when his Oxford friends came to stay. First sherry, then oeil-de-perdrix, then port and then brandy.” She giggled as the bubbles tickled her nose. “They used to get awfully squiffy.”
Rose looked across the chandelier-hung room to where Harry was standing, watching tight-lipped and glittering-eyed as Nina and her new husband greeted their still arriving guests.
“He shouldn’t have come,” she said to Lottie, her heart hurting. “He’s torturing himself and Nina doesn’t care. All she cares about is being the youngest duchess in Debrett.“
“He couldn’t very well not come,” Lottie said, ever practical. She took another sip of champagne and hiccupped. “Compared to the hordes from Rupert’s side of the family, we’re putting up a very poor showing numerically. Besides, he knew William was coming and that he was bringing Sarah with him and I think he wanted to give the two of them all the support he could. It’s the first time Papa and Sarah have been at the same family event together. I don’t think he realized who she was at first, do you? His face was quite comic when the penny finally dropped.”
At Christmas, Walter overcame his pride sufficiently enough to invite Sarah and William to spend Christmas at Crag-Side. He was thanked for his invitation but told they would be going to chapel on Christmas morning and then spending the rest of the day with Sarah’s parents. He was, they said, welcome to join them if he so wished.
Walter hadn’t so wished. If he was going to spend Christmas in a back-to-back cottage without the convenience of an indoor lavatory, then he’d spend it in Beck-Side Street with his sister and her family, not with William’s chapel-going in-laws.
“I think that would be a super idea, Papa,” Lottie said to his vast surprise when he nervously put the idea to her. “I’m sure Noel would like to spend Christmas in his family home instead of coming here, and as Harry won’t care where he spends Christmas, let’s all crowd into Aunt Lizzie’s back-to-back. It’ll be fun.”
“And Polly?” Walter asked hopefully, sliding a finger around the inside of a shirt collar that had suddenly become uncomfortably tight. “She and Jenny will only be next door and …”
Lottie hesitated. A lot of water had run under the bridge since the days when she had so fiercely disapproved of her father’s relationship with Polly Wilkinson. She was in love with Noel now, and Noel had no time for snobbishness or class pretentiousness.
“If it would make you happy, Papa,” she said magnanimously, standing up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. “And only because I know you’re trying to make things right again between yourself and William.”
Nina didn’t spend Christmas in Bradford. She spent it in Morocco with Rupert.
“Rupert says the light is incredible in Tangiers,” Noel said enviously to his father as they sat around a roaring fire, roasting chestnuts. “He says he’s never painted so well in his life as he is doing at the moment.”
“Tha … t’s good.” Laurence liked the fact that Nina had married a young man of serious artistic ability. “Wh … at did you thi … ink of the Sickert exhibition?” he queried as Rose came and sat on the arm of his chair, sliding an arm around his neck. “I imagine it wa … as a li … itile different to the Ger … man Expressionists you so admire.”
Six months later, on Rose’s seventeenth birthday, Sarah gave birth to a daughter.
“Her name is Emma Rose,” Sarah said, propped up by a mound of snowy-white pillows as she received her first visitors. “Isn’t she wonderful, Aunt Lizzie? She’s got Thorpe eyes and a Rimmington mouth and she has the prettiest smile imaginable.”
“She’s a beauty,” Lizzie said, picking
Emma Rose up tenderly from a crib that had been made out of a spare drawer, and cradling her lovingly
The house Emma Rose had been born in was William and Sarah’s own. A solid family terrace house, similar to the house the Sugden’s had lived in, in Jesmond Avenue; it was a fine family home for such a young couple – a home worthy of an ambitious young man who, at twenty-one, was an elected Labour Member of Parliament.
“Nina says she and Rupert will be coming to the christening,” Sarah said, speaking to Rose now as Lizzie’s attention was being given fully to Emma Rose. “She’s sent me a christening shawl that must have cost a year’s wages. It’s far more suitable for Westminster Abbey than for Bull Royd Methodists!”
Despite not being Methodists, Harry stood as Emma Rose’s godfather and Lottie, to her very great surprise, found herself standing as one of Emma Rose’s two godmothers.
“This doesn’t mean I’m a Methodist now, does it?” she asked Rose anxiously, her hair, now she was eighteen, swept up into a loose, elegant knot.
“No,” Rose said, entertained as always by Lottie’s odd mixture of naivety and sophistication, “but it does mean you have to take a very personal interest in Emma Rose’s welfare and I’m not sure turning up at a Methodist chapel with your hair lightened by peroxide is a good way to start.”
“Lord! It’s not so obvious, is it?” Panic-stricken Lottie darted across to the nearest mirror. “I only rinsed a very small amount of it through my hair, just to brighten it a little.”
“Well, you certainly succeeded. It’s just a shame it isn’t the same brightness all over. In a strong light you look a little like an albino zebra.”
Apart from the sight of Lottie looking demurely proper as she stood at the front of the chapel, her hair scooped out of sight beneath a dippingly-wide, marguerite-decorated cream straw hat, there were other surprises at the christening. Not only were Thorpes, Sugdens and Rimmingtons in attendance, Polly and Jenny were there too, and Micky Porritt.
At first Rose scarcely recognized him. His unruly hair was brushed so flat to his head, and to such a high gloss, that he looked a complete stranger. Even more perplexing, though, was the fact that he quite obviously wasn’t there merely because Jenny was there.
“Mi … icky and Wi … illiam are good pals,” her father whispered to her, seeing her puzzlement. “Mi … icky canvassed for him du … ring the election.”
“Do you think Micky will ask Jenny to marry him?” Lizzie whispered musingly under cover of the opening bars of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’.
Rose had been so startled she had dropped her hymn book. Micky marry Jenny? What on earth was her mother talking about? “Micky and Jenny are good friends,” she whispered back, “they’re not sweethearts.”
Lizzie, singing ‘All things wise and wonderful,’ in a rich contralto, was unconvinced. It wasn’t possible to say what Micky’s feelings for Jenny were, but Jenny’s feelings for Micky were written all over her bonny face whenever she looked towards him.
Unknown to Lizzie, when Micky made his proposal of marriage, he did so to Rose, not Jenny. It was September. Rose had left art school and was employed at Rimmington’s as a junior textile designer.
“It isn’t nepotism,” Harry had said to her when he had offered her the position. “Your portfolio would get you a job as a junior designer at Salt’s, or Lister’s, or Lutterworth’s, or any other mill in Bradford, but it would be crazy your working for the opposition, wouldn’t it?”
Her father, well aware that Harry’s remarks about Rose’s talent were the literal truth, was so proud he had had tears in his eyes. “Rimmington’s,” he had said expressively, remembering how very much he had once wanted to be a designer at Rimmington’s and of how Caleb Rimmington had sworn he would never so much as set foot in Rimmington’s mill yard. “Well, little love, you’re certainly on your way to fulfilling all your dreams.”
Micky often met her from work, though out of respect for her position at the mill, never on the cart.
“How about going into t’Park for a walk round t’lake?” he asked laconically, as he heaved himself away from the wall he had been leaning against whilst waiting for her. “It’s a grand evening. We could mebbe take a boat out.”
Rose hesitated for a second, aware that her Mother would have her tea ready and waiting and that her father would be looking forward to hearing all the details of her day, but Micky was right – it was a lovely evening. The sun was still warm, the bright blue of the sky only slightly tinged with the apricot of approaching dusk.
“Have we to wait for Jenny?” she asked. White-collar workers knocked off a full half-hour before the mill hooter signalled the end of the working day for the rest of the mill workers.
Micky shook his head. “No sense. T’sun’ll be losing its warmth by then and it won’t be as nice out on t’lake.”
Aware that there was some truth in his words and aware also that Jenny might not be able to go with them anyway, Rose fell into easy step beside him. She liked Lister Park, or Manningham Park as it was sometimes known. It was only a stone’s throw from Lister’s Mill and long ago it had been the home of the Lister family. In 1870 Samuel Lister had offered his family home and estate to Bradford Corporation at what was seen as a bargain price of £40,000. A memorial hall, used as a museum and art gallery had been built in its centre and named Cartwright Memorial Hall after Edmund Cartwright, the country parson who had invented the first powered weaving loom.
With wry amusement she wondered what would have happened to Crag-Side if, like the Lister home, it had been built adjacent to the family mill. Once narrow streets of back-to-back cottages had encroached on its grounds it would have been speedily got rid off, just as the Lister estate had been got rid off.
“What are you smiling at?” Micky asked, as they turned in at the park gates. “You’ll be talking to yourself next and you know what’ll happen then, you’ll be taken away.”
Her smile widened. She never minded Micky’s dry banter. Even when the joke was against herself, he always made her giggle. “I was just wondering what sort of memorial hall my grandfather would have wanted erected at Crag-Side, if Crag-Side had been sold off to the local Corporation.”
Micky made an inarticulate noise that sounded distinctly rude. He didn’t like it when she spoke of Crag-Side or brought up the subject of her swank Rimmington cousins. William was different, of course. During the time William had been living with the Thorpes, he’d got to know William well. He had time and admiration for him. William had principles that he’d stood by, even though the financial cost of doing so had been high. William was all right – but he couldn’t stand Rose’s other two cousins, Lottie and Harry.
Even merely thinking about them made him scowl. Lottie was fast. With her unnaturally gold hair and overly red lips it was a conclusion a blind man could have come to, though Rose appeared to be oblivious of it. As for Harry Rimmington … Micky’s fists clenched. Harry bloody Rimmington had it all. A posh family home in Ilkley; a mill he was virtually master of; looks that had girls swooning in droves; and a motorcar with a bonnet as long as an Atlantic liner and a horn as loud as the last trump.
“And what are you looking so fierce about?” Rose asked sunnily as they made their way straight to the lake and the boat-house. “You look as if you want to punch someone!”
“Aye,” he gave a wry grin, unclenching a fist and jingling the coins he had put in his trouser pocket for the boat ride, “mebbe I do.”
“You’ve only got’alf an ’our,” the boatman said as he held a rowing boat steady for them to step into, “Then I’m calling all t’boats in, understand?”
Micky didn’t bother answering. As far as he was concerned he’d paid his tanner and if he wanted to stay out on the lake till the moon came up, he’d jolly well do so.
Once Rose had safely seated herself, he slung his jacket down beside him and, sitting facing her, took hold of the oars.
“There’s summat I want to say to you,”
he said as he pulled strongly away towards the nearest of the lake’s two duck-infested islands. “Summat a bit special.”
Rose regarded him warily. Micky was a young man of notoriously few words and if he had something special to say, then it would be just that. It wouldn’t be gossip or idle speculation.
“Yes?” she said, aware that the sunlight on the water was creating deep dark jewelled colours of serpentine and jade. If she could re-create the effect in one of her designs …
“I’m thinking of going off to New Zealand,” Micky said, his strong arm muscles rippling beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt as he rounded the first island and headed in the direction of the lonelier, less boat-visited, second island.
“New Zealand?” Rose stared at him in incredulity. “New Zealand? Do you know how far away New Zealand is, Micky? It’s even further away than Australia! What about your Dad? What about …”
“I’ll be taking me Dad wi’me.” They were now at the far end of the lake, where few boats ventured. Satisfied that they were now enjoying as much privacy as could reasonably be found in Bradford on a work-day teatime, he rested on the oars, letting the boat drift towards an overhang of willow.
“I’m going to sheep farm,” he said, his eyes holding hers with fierce intensity. “I won’t have my own sheep farm at first, o’course. But I will eventually.”
Rose believed him. When it came to determination and grit Micky was way ahead of anyone else she knew. Except William and Harry, of course.
“But … it’s so far!” She tried to imagine Beck-Side Street without Micky, and without Albert and his horse and cart, and couldn’t. “I’ll miss you,” she said inadequately, her voice wobbly, fighting back a sudden on-rush of tears.
He leaned towards her, sending the boat rocking wildly, taking her hands in his, holding them so tightly her skin dimpled white beneath the imprint of his thumbs.
“There’s no need for you to miss me.” His eyes burned hers. “I’m a Yorkshireman, Rose. I can’t talk fancy …”
Yorkshire Rose Page 18
