Rosie

by Lesley Pearse

  On one visit she said she felt Rosie should think about her future and produced career leaflets which ranged from jobs in offices to joining the women’s army, and asked her to read them all and see if any of them appealed to her.

  On another visit she explained the facts of life, in detail, unperturbed by Rosie’s embarrassment, and seemed concerned to discover she hadn’t yet had a period. In these visits they had never yet talked about Cole or her brothers. Rosie didn’t bring up the subject because she was too ashamed to, and Miss Pemberton didn’t mention what she knew because she felt the child was happier in ignorance.

  It wasn’t until a visit in the middle of August, nine weeks after Rosie’s arrival, that Miss Pemberton felt the necessity to speak of them. She knew the date for the trial would be set any day now.

  They were in the kitchen, Rosie cleaning the silver. Outside it was pouring with rain as it had been for several days. Over a cup of tea they discussed the awful flooding in Devon. Just that morning Rosie had read in the newspaper that thirty-one people had been killed in Lynmouth. She asked the social worker how things were on the Somerset Levels.

  ‘Very bad. Lots of fields are flooded,’ Miss Pemberton replied. ‘People living by the River Parrett have a foot or two of water in their cottages.’

  Rosie was just about to launch into an account of one family she knew who got flooded out most winters and merely moved upstairs after Christmas in anticipation, when she sensed the older woman had something on her mind.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ she asked.

  Miss Pemberton folded her arms on the kitchen table and cleared her throat. ‘Not wrong exactly. I just have something I must discuss with you. You see, I went to see your father in prison a few days ago.’ She paused, looking a little flustered. ‘I thought it was essential that someone acted as a go-between. I’m sure there are things you both wish to say to one another.’

  A cold chill went down Rosie’s spine. She sensed that what Miss Pemberton wanted to add was ‘before he’s hanged’.

  ‘I haven’t got anything to say to him.’ Rosie couldn’t even bear to call him ‘Dad’. ‘I try to forget him.’

  ‘I think you do have things to say to him,’ Miss Pemberton said gently but firmly. ‘He is your father!’

  Rosie said nothing.

  ‘I think that if you don’t, you might regret it in years to come. We both know that he is almost certain to be found guilty at his trial. And we both know all too well what that means.’

  Rosie gulped. She knew exactly what that meant. A rope around his neck and a long drop. ‘What did he say about me?’

  ‘He said he loved you. That he wished he’d done better for you. He said to say how sorry he was about hitting you that day.’

  ‘He’s just a murderer to me,’ Rosie said stubbornly. ‘I wouldn’t care if he was ill, mad or turning green. I just hate him.’

  Violet Pemberton looked at Rosie and felt desperately sorry for the girl. There was something upright, strong and bright about her. She’d come to this house under the worst of circumstances, yet she’d actually made the best of things. Her diction had improved, she always looked clean and tidy with well-brushed hair, she enjoyed learning new skills. Violet didn’t subscribe to the idea that character traits were all inborn, but believed much was learned by example and upbringing. As Rosie’s mother disappeared when the child was only six, she could hardly have been much of an influence. So it stood to reason that Cole Parker had to be responsible, at least in part.

  In her time as a social worker she’d visited several men in prison to discuss their families with them. In the main they had been some of life’s weasels, unpleasant, shady characters who were so inadequate she felt little compassion for them. But Cole Parker wasn’t a weasel, he was a big powerful man who even in a prison uniform had managed to look dignified and proud. He looked her right in the eye as he was speaking, he hadn’t once lapsed into self-pity. He confessed that his relationship with Heather had fallen apart before Alan was born because he had reason to believe the child wasn’t his. Yet he said he was ashamed that he hadn’t found it in his heart to love the boy as his own. And somehow this man, for all his many faults had managed to pass on to his daughter his finer qualities. Courage, determination and pride. She found herself moved by that.

  ‘Well, you just think over what I’ve said.’ She gave Rosie a pat on the hand. ‘I’m not suggesting you go to visit him, prisons are no place for young girls, but maybe you might like to write to him.’

  Herbert Bentley came home early from work on the 1st of September. Miss Pemberton had telephoned him at his office with the latest news about Cole Parker just as he got back from lunch. Knowing his wife would be out for the afternoon with one of her church committees, he thought it best to go home and take the opportunity to talk to Rosie himself. He didn’t quite trust his wife to be diplomatic.

  Herbert wasn’t quite the little mouse that his wife’s friends and acquaintances took him for. He just bowed to her dominance because it was easier than confrontation. If his marriage was cold, empty and unsatisfying, his printing business more than made up for it. He was in charge there, looked up to by his staff whom he considered more friends than employees. He made a decent living, he kept others in work, he enjoyed it and he’d long since realized that he was luckier than most men.

  He let himself into the house with his key and stood in the hall listening for a moment. The house was silent and he thought perhaps he’d come on a fool’s errand and Rosie had gone out to look in the shops.

  Walking into the sitting-room, he dumped his briefcase on a chair and took off his jacket. It was hot again; it looked as if an Indian summer was on its way. He went over to the windows to open them, but stopped short as he saw Rosie below in the garden. She was on her hands and knees, planting out something in one of the beds.

  Standing back a little by the curtain so Rosie wouldn’t spot him if she looked up, he watched her for a while. She was kneeling down, tenderly placing the plants in a way he could remember doing himself once, before Edith’s griping had driven him to spending more time in the print room. Rosie had proved to be worth helping; she was a brave little thing and as bright as a button. Anyone who could tolerate Edith’s constant criticism and learn so quickly deserved a medal.

  Her hair looked like burnished copper coils today in the sunshine. Such pretty hair – it was a good job he’d stopped Edith from cutting it short as she’d once suggested. He wished now that he hadn’t rushed home. She looked so happy and what he had to tell her was going to ruin that.

  Rosie jumped guiltily to her feet as he came out through the kitchen to the garden. ‘Hullo, Mr Bentley, er, um, would you like some tea?’ she said falteringly. He never came home at this time of day and she was embarrassed to be caught unawares.

  ‘I’ll make some for both of us,’ he said with a shy smile. ‘You get back to the plants. I was wondering who the good fairy was that had been looking after them for me.’

  Rosie was now stunned because Mr Bentley had said a whole sentence and offered to make her tea. She knew too she really should have asked before touching things in the garden.

  Curiously he didn’t seem cross at all. In fact he seemed pleased. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t ask you first,’ she said, hopping nervously from one foot to the other. ‘I should, I know, but I couldn’t bear to see so many weeds.’

  Ten minutes later Mr Bentley came back down the garden with two mugs of tea. Rosie looked askance at them. She’d been told by Mrs Bentley you should only ever give a mug to a tradesman.

  ‘Better than those prissy teacups,’ he said with a smile, sitting down on the steps which led to the next terrace. ‘Now tell me what are those things you’re planting?’

  ‘Lupins,’ Rosie said. ‘The ones at the bottom of the garden had seeded themselves, so I dug them up and thought I’d replant them here. They’re all blue ones. I thought they’d look pretty here next year amongst the marguerites; perhaps we cou
ld plant something red with them too. That would be nice for the Coronation. I read in one of the magazines you brought me home that all the gardeners in the big parks are planning red, white and blue displays for next summer.’

  Herbert felt as if he’d been stung. He hadn’t imagined that she ever thought more than a couple of weeks ahead. Now she was talking of next June.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ he said, patting the step beside him. ‘I’ve got something I need to talk to you about.’ He wished now he’d taken Miss Pemberton up on her offer to break the news to Rosie. Yet just an hour ago he had thought it was kinder to tell her himself.

  Her face clouded over. ‘Is it the trial?’

  Herbert nodded. ‘Miss Pemberton telephoned me today, and I came straight home. The trial has been set to start on the 24th of September. And it will be here in Bristol. Not at the assizes in Wells or Taunton as we expected.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and cupped her hands round her mug as if suddenly chilled.

  Herbert didn’t know quite how to proceed, even though he’d had it clear in his head on the way home.

  ‘The trouble with it being here in Bristol is that it’s going to attract a great deal of local attention. I can’t remember when we last had a murder trial here. People are ghoulish about such things and it will dominate the newspapers.’

  Rosie turned on the step towards him, her eyes looking right into his. ‘You won’t want me here then,’ she said without a trace of bitterness, only quiet acceptance. ‘Is that what you wanted to say, Mr Bentley?’

  ‘No. That isn’t what I meant,’ he said, blushing furiously.

  Rosie said nothing, just looked down at her feet; they were bare and very suntanned and she flexed her toes so the grass sprang up between them.

  ‘What about Seth and Norman?’ she asked eventually. ‘Will they be in court too?’ She had refused to ask about either of her brothers in all this time, and Miss Pemberton hadn’t volunteered any information about them either.

  ‘Norman will be called as a witness of course. But didn’t Miss Pemberton tell you that Seth has been charged jointly with your father?’ he asked.

  ‘She said he would be tried at the same time,’ Rosie said, then, as if a thought had just come to her, she looked at Herbert sharply. ‘Does that mean the police think he helped Dad do the murders?’

  Herbert squirmed. He thought Miss Pemberton should have made this plain to Rosie some time ago. He couldn’t think why she hadn’t. ‘Well, yes, Rosie, I thought you knew that.’

  ‘No. I didn’t,’ she said. She was thrown entirely. ‘I thought he had only been charged with hurting me.’ She paused for a moment, a strange sense of relief flooding through her that her prayers had been answered and Seth’s wickedness had been seen and would be punished. ‘Will I have to go to court too?’

  Herbert noticed she had grown very pale; the freckles across her nose stood out more clearly. He didn’t think it was advisable to try and explain now why the police had dropped some lesser charges against her brother. In point of fact the decision was partly to protect Rosie: to save her a harrowing court appearance and to keep her anonymity. But the police believed that by concentrating their entire efforts on the most serious offence, that of joint murder with his father, Seth would hang anyway and it wasn’t necessary or advisable to spin out the trial and possibly confuse the jury with lesser offences.

  ‘No. You won’t have to be there, not now. They have enough witnesses without you. Apparently the police have finally tracked down Ethel Parker, so she’ll be one of them.’

  ‘Will she?’ Rosie exclaimed. Her feelings about this piece of news were mixed. It was a relief to find that Cole hadn’t killed her too, but at the same time Ethel was unlikely to say anything in court which might help her father. ‘It’s going to be very strange for her coming face to face with the two boys she left behind,’ she said. ‘Maybe if she hadn’t run out on them, they wouldn’t be the nasty pieces of work they are now?’

  Herbert looked sharply at Rosie. That was a remarkably adult observation. He wondered what her real feelings were about her father and brother. Did she believe them innocent? Or did she know they were guilty? He felt ashamed of himself that he’d had her under his roof all this time, yet he hadn’t tried to communicate with her. But it was too late now to try and discover what was going on in her head.

  ‘Well, Mrs Bentley won’t want me here if there’s going to be a terrible fuss, will she?’ Rosie said after a moment’s deep thought.

  Herbert sighed. Rosie had hit the nail right on the head. His wife might bask in reflected glory at taking in ‘an unfortunate’, but her kind of charity was the fair weather variety.

  ‘I haven’t spoken to her about it yet,’ he said, but his forlorn tone told Rosie what the outcome would be.

  ‘It’s okay, Mr Bentley.’ Rosie touched his arm tentatively. She was grateful that he cared and she was reminded then that but for his previous intervention on her behalf she would have been shipped out weeks ago. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Do you?’ He looked at Rosie raising one eyebrow. She had been brought up with a man who killed women who got in his way. Did she secretly despise him for being so weak with his wife? What sort of woman would she grow into? A tyrant like Edith, or a long-suffering victim like her mother? He fervently hoped she could steer a middle course.

  ‘Yes I do.’ She suddenly smiled at him. ‘It hasn’t been wasted being here with you. I’ve learned such a lot, about laying tables, gardening and all sorts of other things. I’ll be all right wherever I go. Don’t you worry about me.’

  Herbert drank his tea, then walked around the garden with Rosie. He let her show him all the plants she’d uncovered amongst the weeds, then went back indoors, pretending he had some letters to write.

  He felt afraid for Rosie. Cole and Seth Parker might be the ones facing the death penalty, but poor Rosie was going to hear things in the next few weeks that would destroy any remaining good memories she had of her family and strip away the last shreds of her innocence. Worse still was the fear that the evidence the police had compiled against her brother Seth would be insufficient for the jury to find him guilty of murder, and that he’d be out on the streets in a few weeks looking for the person whom he felt to be responsible for his father’s plight.

  Herbert sighed. Miss Pemberton had the right idea in getting Rosie right away from the West Country with a brand new identity. She’d also been acting in Rosie’s best interests by convincing the police how damaging it would be for her to be forced to stand up in court and give evidence against her father and brother. But her plan of shielding Rosie from any further harm and humiliation sounded almost as bad as incarcerating her in a prison.

  He could think of no worse fate than being sent to work in a lunatic asylum.

  Chapter Five

  Rosie peered through the tall iron gates of Carrington Hall and shuddered. She had imagined that a private mental home with such a grand-sounding name would be a kind of stately home set in beautiful grounds. Instead it was a rambling, ugly building which looked like an old workhouse. The garden was overgrown and very neglected.

  Peeling paintwork, dark red brick showing through damaged stucco, the tall fir trees surrounding it and the barred windows added a menacing note to the already melancholy character of a place used to lock away the feeble-minded.

  It was pure instinct that made her turn and walk away, back towards the pretty road she’d come along from Woodside Park tube station. The semi-detached houses there were all newly built since the war, with keyhole-shaped porches, neatly cut lawns and tidy flower borders. When she saw them she’d even begun to think things were going to improve for her. Hadn’t life thrown enough horror at her already, without Miss Pemberton betraying her trust and sending her to a crumbling madhouse?

  She had gone some twenty yards when common sense prevailed. She stopped, put her suitcase down for a moment, and considered her options.

  Where else could she go at se
ven in the evening? Thomas’s home in Hampstead couldn’t be that far away, but would he welcome her turning up uninvited on his doorstep?

  She had no idea about how to get another job or a place to live. London was so huge too, and she had only a couple of pounds in her purse, and was too tired to think clearly. Maybe she was overreacting? Besides, it was a bit spineless to run before she’d even set one foot over the threshold.

  Taking a deep breath, she turned back, this time trying to be more positive. The house appeared to have been extended over the years in a haphazard fashion. Even the roof was at two different heights. On the lower side there were two main floors with a row of tiny attic windows below a conventional roof. On the other side there were three floors all with smaller windows and pointed gables up above.

  On the ground level other single-storey buildings had been added to the main house; they sprawled round a concrete area which was enclosed by an eight-foot chain-link fence.

  Rosie pushed open the gates and began to walk cautiously up the weed-filled concrete drive. It had been raining all day until just an hour ago, and water dripped on her from the overhanging trees. The drive was about forty yards long and as the ground-floor windows had net curtaining on their lower half, Rosie couldn’t see anyone, but she had the distinct impression she was being watched.

  She rang the front-door bell, but it was a long time before the door was opened. A fat middle-aged woman in a navy blue nurse’s dress and starched frilly cap perched on iron grey hair scowled at her.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, as if she suspected Rosie of hawking brushes door to door.

  ‘I’m Rosemary Smith,’ Rosie said, so nervous now that she could barely raise her voice above a whisper. ‘I’ve come here to work.’

  The woman’s sour expression did not change. No sudden welcoming smile or an apology, just a cold stare. ‘I expected you hours ago,’ she said curtly. ‘We’ve all had our tea and the kitchen’s shut up. I’m Miss Barnes, the matron, and I’m much too busy now to deal with you. I’ll call someone to show you round. Come in and wait.’