‘That’s what he says he’s going to do anyway,’ Micky wrote to Jenny. ‘Who the girl is, I don’t know. The guns started up before I could ask. It’s good news about the baby. Maybe this lot will finally be over before it’s born. Give my best to Charlie.’
Jenny pondered long and hard before showing the letter to Rose. She knew that after Nina had been widowed, Rose had believed Nina and Harry would eventually marry. What Rose felt now she knew that that would never happen, Jenny didn’t know. She only knew that it wouldn’t be right to allow Rose to live in fresh, fierce hope where Harry Rimmington was concerned. Not if all such hope was going to be in vain.
It was June when she finally plucked up the courage to show her Micky’s hastily scribbled, pencilled letter. They were seated on their favourite park bench in Lister Park, enjoying a rare afternoon out together. The newspapers had been full of the news that the Germans were gaining ground again, reaching and crossing the River Aisne at several strategic points, but they had had much happier things to talk about. Her coming baby; her mother’s move to a modest family villa at Scarborough where Walter soon hoped to join her; Lottie and Noel’s forthcoming wedding.
“It’s a pity Noel won’t be able to walk Lottie down the aisle,” Rose said, throwing some crumbs into the lake for the birds, “but though he can now walk a few steps, he isn’t up to anything more ambitious.”
“Rose, I …” She took the letter out of her maternity smock pocket and laid it on her lap.
“Lottie desperately wants Harry to be home for the wedding, but he says home leave is so out of the question and that she and Noel must just go ahead and—”
“Rose, there’s something I have to show you.”
At the tone in Jenny’s voice Rose forgot all about the ducks. For the first time she became aware of the letter on Jenny’s lap.
“It isn’t news of a death,” Jenny said hastily as the blood drained from Rose’s face. “It’s from Micky. He’s all right, he isn’t injured, but …”
Rose picked the letter up. Like all Micky’s letters, it was very short.
“I didn’t know whether you already knew,” Jenny said awkwardly. “And if you didn’t, I thought perhaps it would be best if you did know and—”
“Yes.” Rose could hardly frame the word. She felt sick and giddy. It was so unexpected. If, before Nina’s remarriage, it had been the news that he was to marry Nina, then at least it wouldn’t have been a thunderbolt from the blue. As it was …
“Are you all right, Rose?” Jenny was asking anxiously. “Do you think we should be going home?”
Rose didn’t answer her. She couldn’t. Home. Home for her was now Crag-Side, and Crag-Side was where Harry would bring his bride. She couldn’t live there then. It would be an utter impossibility. It would be beyond all bearing.
“Perhaps if we had a cup of tea in Cartwright Hall café?” Jenny was suggesting, appalled by the pallor of Rose’s face, wondering if she had done the right thing in showing her the letter, wondering how on earth Rose was going to get home to Ilkley.
“Yes.” With a supreme effort Rose tried to rally herself. It was no use behaving as if she were in a Greek tragedy. She had always known that though she and Harry would be best friends for as long as they both had breath in their bodies, he was never going to be her lover. She remembered his trips to Leeds and Manchester in the days after Nina had become engaged to Rupert. Was the girl he intended marrying as soon as the war was over, a girl he had met then? There really didn’t seem to be any other option – unless she were a French girl – a girl he had met, perhaps, on leave in Paris.
Chapter Sixteen
During the next few months, as the tide of the war turned and the Allies began to sweep all before them, delivering crushing blows to the Germans all along the front line, Rose pondered her future.
She had known, almost from the very first moment of reading Micky’s letter, that she wouldn’t stay on at Crag-Side, and in the same instant she had known that she wouldn’t ask William and Sarah if she could make her home with them. They already had her mother living with them, and Sarah was now expecting another baby. A spinster cousin taking up lodgings beneath his roof was an inconvenience William could well do without.
Where, then, would she go? What would she do? The minute Harry was home he would take over the running of Rimmington’s. Everyone knew now that William, by choice, would never do so and that it was only a matter of time before Harry, knowing the burden he would be lifting from William’s shoulders, became not only Rimmington’s de facto master, but its legal master as well.
She thought about offering her services as a designer to one of the other Bradford mills. Lister’s, perhaps. Or Lutterworth’s, but she didn’t think about it for long. How could she work in another mill, within sight of Rimmington’s? How, indeed, could she even remain in Bradford?
It was Josie who inadvertently came up with the answer to her problem.
“Have you heard the latest good news?” she asked her cheerily one morning as, together, they wheeled a patient’s bed out into the September warmth of the terrace. “The Germans are retreating as fast as their legs will carry them. The war really is going to be over by Christmas this year, and the minute hostilities are over I’m going to head back home, to New Zealand.”
Rose had stared at her, transfixed. New Zealand was as far away as anyone could possibly get from Bradford. In New Zealand she would never have to suffer the pain of seeing Harry with his new wife. In New Zealand she would have friends, for as well as Josie, Micky would be there.
“Can I come with you?” she asked, her fingers tightening around the iron rail of the bed-head. “Can I stay with your family for a little while? Until I can get myself a job and a place of my own?”
Josie gurgled with delighted laughter. “Find a place of your own? My parents have one of the biggest sheep farms in the country! You can move in for good without anyone batting an eyelid!”
Rose had written a letter to Harry, telling him of her plans, but she hadn’t posted it. She didn’t intend posting it until she was on the point of leaving. Instead she wrote him other letters. She told him that Jenny had given birth to a baby boy; that Noel and Lottie had married and that though Noel hadn’t been able to walk his bride down the aisle, he had stood unaided by her side during the service. She told him that his father now spent nearly all his time with Polly in Scarborough and that they were only waiting for his return home in order that they could have a wedding at which all the family would be present. Then, in November, when the Armistice was signed, she posted her letter telling him that she was accompanying Josie Warrender to New Zealand.
‘There isn’t really anything to keep me at Crag-Side any longer,’ she had written. ‘New Zealand will be a fresh beginning for me. Wish me luck. I wish you all the luck there is in the world.’
In the silvery pale light of early morning, a light breeze blew across what had once been no man’s land. Harry shivered and pulled on gauntletted gloves. The war was over but it would be months before the giant machinery of the war wound down and every man who had served in it, and survived it, was home again. He, however, was lucky. This leave had been in the pipeline for months and it couldn’t possibly have come at a better moment. He stamped his booted feet against the cold. This time tomorrow he’d be home. This time tomorrow he would be at Crag-Side with Rose.
“Post, sir!” a private shouted, running breathlessly up to him. “Thought I wasn’t going to catch you, Sir! Have a nice leave, Sir! Give my best to dear old Blighty!”
He opened the letter as his adjutant drove him away from camp and towards the railway station. Seconds later he knew that if he hadn’t already been on his way home, he would have immediately gone AWOL. New Zealand? New Zealand? A fresh beginning! What was she talking about, for Christ’s sake! She couldn’t make a fresh beginning on her own. They were going to make a fresh beginning together! A panic he had never before experienced, not even on the battlefield, roar
ed through him. Christ Almighty, but he couldn’t lose her now! Not before he had at least told her how he felt about her! Not when he might, just might, be able to persuade her to stay – when he might be able to persuade her to begin caring for him a different way – to love him as he loved her.
“Faster, man!” he shouted at his adjutant in a way so totally unexpected and out of character that his adjutant nearly drove into a ditch. “Faster!”
The train to the port was so interminably slow he thought he was going to have a nervous breakdown. When he reached the port it was chock-a-block with troops and the first boat he could get a passage on was a night-boat.
Time after time he read and reread her letter. She hadn’t said when she was setting sail, only ‘by the time you receive this I will be on my way with Josie to Wellington.’ Would they be leaving from Southampton? Had they got a passage on a troopship? Why had she never given him any indication that she, like Micky, was thinking of emigrating?
“Dover!” someone called out. “I can see’er through the dawn mist and she don’t “alf look a grand sight!”
He got a seat on a London-bound train, jammed between an American soldier and a woman so fat she was bigger than Gertie Graham. What would he do if he didn’t get home in time and she had already left? He couldn’t follow her, or not immediately. He would have to wait for his discharge and that could take weeks, possibly months.
At Charing Cross he battled through the rejoicing crowds to Kings Cross and a train north. Had it been Micky who had put the idea of New Zealand into her head? Even if she wanted to go there, why would she want to leave before he had returned home and she could say a proper goodbye to him? What was going on? Why, why, why hadn’t he told her months ago, years ago, that she was the love of his life and that he’d have no joy, nor peace, without her?
“Leeds!” the conductor called out. “All change for Bradford! Ilkley! York!”
It was mid-afternoon by the time the taxi deposited him at the foot of the sweeping stone steps leading to Crag-Side’s impressive front door. The door was ajar. Two suitcases were propped against it.
He burst into the marble-floored hall, saying to a startled looking girl in nurse’s uniform, “Rose? Is she still here? Are these her bags? Is she still here?”
“She’s up on the moor,” the girl said, eyeing his broad shoulders and near-black eyes and hair appreciatively. “She and Nurse Warrender are leaving in an hour’s time for Southampton …”
He turned on his heels, running out through the open door, taking the wide stone steps two at a time, running back down the drive, out of the gates, up the tree-lined road that led to the moor. Running, running, running, his heart pumping as if it were going to burst.
It was very quiet on the moors. In the November mist a few sheep huddled forlornly. With her fur hat low over her ears, and her gloved hands tucked deep into the warmth of her muff, Rose walked over frost-hard ground towards the cairn. She had wanted to look out from it over a vast vista of rolling, heather-covered moorland, just as she had once done with Harry. Then, though, it had been a bright, clear day. Now, in keeping with her mood, the day was bleak, the low-lying clouds dank and oppressive.
She removed a hand from her muff, touching the freezing cold stones of the cairn with a gloved fingertip. Perhaps it was just as well that now the time had come to say goodbye to Yorkshire, Yorkshire was hidden from her. If it hadn’t been, if she had been able to look to the north-east and see the moor rolling purple-hazed for mile after mile and then south, to where Crag-Side’s decorative chimney pots peeped, barely visible above the tops of its surrounding trees, then her inner resolve might very well have failed her.
She took a small stone she had taken from Crag-Side’s rockery out of her coat pocket and placed it on top of the cairn and then, tears stinging her eyes, she turned to leave.
It was then, as she did so, that the clouds suddenly lifted and parted, revealing a hard, bright, azure sky. Distantly she could see the grey rooftops of Ilkley; a little nearer, the chimney pots and treetops of Crag-Side, and nearer still, a running figure. A figure running in her direction. A figure uniformed and toughly built. A figure running with athletic strength and muscular control. A figure she had been determined never to set eyes on again, knowing that if she did so her heart would surely break. A figure she loved with every fibre of her being.
“Rose!” he shouted breathlessly as he raced towards her over the frosted heather. “ROSE!”
She stood there, rooted to the spot, unable to move. Rose, not Funny-Face. He hardly ever called her Rose. Why was he calling her Rose now? Why was he running towards her with such frantic urgency? What had happened? Was he bringing bad news? Had Micky, in the very last days of the war, been fatally wounded?
As the yards between them closed and she saw the intensity of his expression, the look almost of fear on his face, her own fear escalated so that she could scarcely breathe.
“What is it?” she demanded in terror as he caught hold of her, his arms going round her, “Has someone died? Is it Micky? Is it …?”
“No one’s died.” He was panting harshly, sucking in air in great breathless gasps. “It’s just that … I thought I was going to be too late …” His voice cracked in a way she had never heard it crack before. He was holding her, too, in a way he had never previously held her; holding her as if he would never, ever, let her go. “Don’t leave,” he gasped abruptly, hugging her against him so tightly she thought her bones were going to break. “Don’t leave. Not yet. Not now. Not till I’ve talked to you. I’ve got so much to say, Rose. So much to say that I ought to have said long ago.”
His eyes were burning hers. She could feel his heart slamming. She could feel her own self-control beginning to slip. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want him to tell her about the girl he loved; the girl he was going to marry. She couldn’t survive the pain of it.
“I know,” she said stiffly, through lips that felt frozen with far more than cold. “You’re to be married. Micky wrote to Jenny. I thought it would be best … I didn’t want to be here when …” She couldn’t go on. The tears she had fought against so hard and for so long, were choking her throat. They were also on her eyelashes, blurring her vision so that she could no longer see him clearly; so that he looked to be almost as stunned and incredulous as she had felt when she had first seen him running towards her.
“Is that why you’re leaving?” His voice was as stunned as his expression and there was something else in his voice; a change of mood so drastic she felt dizzily disorientated. “You’re leaving because you think I’m going to marry?”
He sounded euphoric. He sounded as if it was the most wonderful news he had ever heard.
She nodded, knowing her tears were now streaking her cheeks and no longer caring. He knew now how she felt about him, so what point was there in further deception?
“Rose, Rose“ He was tilting her face to his, wiping her tears away tenderly with a fingertip, his voice just as tender as his touch; just as caressing. “I do want to marry, Rose,” he was saying unsteadily, looking down into her saucer-eyed, funny, beautiful, face. “I want to marry you. I don’t know why I never realized years and years ago that it was you I loved, but I realize it now.”
If his arms hadn’t been so securely around her, she would have fallen. Somewhere very near to them a bird had begun to sing. Even though it was November and therefore impossible, Rose was sure it was a lark.
“Can you forgive me being so stupid?” he was asking, his hair tumbling low over his brows just as it had the first time they had met, hunkered down opposite each other on the pavement outside Brown & Muff’s. “Can you learn to love me, as I love you, Rose? As I will always love you?”
Tears continued to roll down her face, but they were tears of joy now, not tears of anguish.
“I don’t have to learn.” Her heart was filled with such wild elation she didn’t known how she could possibly contain it. “I love you already. I’ve love
d you for so long, Harry, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love you.”
Beneath the fiery fox fur of her hat her toffee-brown eyes were shining, her beguiling little monkey face, radiant.
“And you’ll marry me?” His voice was thick with urgency and desire and absolute love. “You’ll marry me just as soon as we can gather everyone together for the biggest family wedding ever?”
She nodded, laughing through her tears, and at long, long last, he lowered his head to hers, covering her mouth with his, his lips hot and sweet and all she had ever dreamed they would be.
Later, much later, as, with their arms around each other’s waists, her head resting lovingly on his shoulder, they began to walk back across the moor in the direction of Crag-Side, she said musingly, “Micky won’t be leaving Flanders for New Zealand without coming home first, will he?”
Harry turned his head, flashing her the down-slanting smile that always sent excitement spiralling through her. “No. He’ll have to come back to Blighty to be demobbed. Were you worrying he wouldn’t be at our wedding?”
“No.” His army jacket was rough beneath her cheek as she smiled rosily up at him. “It’s just that by the time he’s home for our wedding there’ll be someone in New Zealand who will be very, very pleased to meet him. I want to give him her address before he sails.”
She thought of Micky’s broad, superbly fit physique and her smile deepened. Josie was going to fall in love with Micky at first sight and Micky was going to find himself working on a sheep farm sooner than even he could anticipate.
A sense of deep, all-pervading joy flooded over her. The war was over, the future was golden, and the world was a beautiful place. “Let’s run!” she said impulsively, hugging Harry’s arm as Crag-Side came into view. “Let’s run all the way home!”
Yorkshire Rose Page 24
