Rosie

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘What have I done?’ Rosie asked indignantly, wriggling away from the woman. She couldn’t think of anything which would warrant such a vicious attack on her.

  ‘This.’ Matron caught her by the neck of her jumper and dragged her towards a cardboard box on the floor. Flicking it open with one finger in a gesture of utter distaste, she pushed Rosie’s head down towards it.

  Rosie gagged at the strong smell. It appeared to be two pairs of maroon uniform knickers, and a pair of blood-stained white ones. Surrounding them were four or five unwrapped soiled sanitary towels.

  ‘That’s nothing to do with me.’ Rosie jerked herself away from Matron. ‘Why should you think it was?’

  ‘Because I discovered them under your bed and you own several pairs of white knickers identical to those.’

  Rosie was so shocked by the accusation she stared stupidly at Matron for a second.

  ‘Don’t gawp at me like that, girl,’ Matron roared. ‘Explain yourself.’

  ‘They aren’t mine,’ she said. In fact after a moment’s thought she had a feeling the white knickers were indeed hers and she also realized who was responsible for leaving such a disgusting collection for someone else to find.

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ Matron hissed. ‘I know they are yours.’

  ‘I am not lying, and I do share the room in case you’ve forgotten,’ Rosie snapped back angrily. She could hardly believe that another girl would even think of helping herself to someone else’s knickers, but as angry as she was, she couldn’t actually bring herself to name names.

  ‘Just as I expected.’ Matron was red in the face now and her already close-set eyes looked like one dark slit across her nose. ‘You would try and put the blame on someone else. They are yours. Don’t deny it.’ She lifted her hand and slapped Rosie’s cheek hard.

  Rosie’s temper flared up at such injustice. ‘I will deny it because it’s the truth,’ she shouted out. ‘I haven’t even started my periods yet, and how dare you slap me for something I couldn’t possibly have done.’

  ‘You liar,’ the older woman yelled back, picking up the box and shoving it into Rosie’s hands. ‘I’ll be reporting you first thing tomorrow morning to Mr Brace-Coombes.’

  Rosie didn’t stop to think, but flung the box back at Matron, its disgusting contents spilling on to the floor. ‘Report me to who you like. But those things are not mine and if you want someone to remove them, find the filthy person they really belong to.’ She ran to the door and rushed out before Matron could catch her.

  When Rosie burst into the bedroom a couple of minutes later, Maureen was sitting on her bed. Her head jerked up guiltily and Rosie reached her in two strides, slapping her hard across the cheek before the girl had a chance to move.

  ‘You can get downstairs and tell Matron who those towels and knickers belong to,’ she roared, so angry she was unable to control herself. ‘Go on, now!’

  When Maureen didn’t move Rosie grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her until her teeth almost rattled and her glasses fell off.

  ‘Do you hear me?’ she shouted. ‘You are an animal, Maureen. You already disgust me because you don’t wash, and now you’ve left those stinking things there for Matron to find and get me blamed. And how dare you take my knickers and wear them? Haven’t you got any pride or decency? If you don’t go down now and tell Matron the truth, I’ll make such a commotion that every single person in this place will know how filthy you are.’

  ‘I’m s-s-s-sorry,’ Maureen stuttered through the shaking, her grey eyes wide with terror. ‘I didn’t say they were yours; Matron just assumed that and I was too scared to tell her the truth.’

  ‘I haven’t even started my periods yet,’ Rosie snarled. ‘But even if I had, I would never leave such things lying around, neither would any decent person. Now get down and tell Matron, or so help me I’ll swing for you.’

  Maureen slunk out, giving Rosie a wide berth, her terrified expression saying that she preferred taking her chances with Matron to staying here for more punishment.

  Once Maureen was gone, Rosie sunk down on her bed and began to cry. She was furious with Maureen and Matron, but even more horrified with herself for losing control. She’d never known she was capable of such rage, and it was just another reminder of the Parker blood running through her veins.

  The door opened and Linda looked round it. ‘I ‘eard all that’ she said. ‘Good for you.’

  ‘Go away,’ Rosie said, struggling to compose herself. ‘This is a private matter.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Linda pouted. ‘I only wanted to say I admire your spunk. Me and Mary thought you had the makings of another bleedin’ doormat.’

  It was over an hour before Maureen slunk back into the room bearing an angry red hand-print on her cheek where Matron must have slapped her. She was quivering with fright and clearly thought Rosie was going to lay into her again.

  But Rosie had calmed down and her anger was now directed more at Matron than a girl who’d never been taught basic cleanliness. She had found her letter from Miss Pemberton had been read. The hair grip was gone, the letter put back in the envelope the other way round.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Maureen whined and burst into tears. ‘We’re supposed to take them down to the incinerator, but I always forget. And I’m really sorry too that I wore your knickers, but I didn’t have any clean ones of my own.’

  Rosie softened then. She could guess what Matron had put the girl through. Maureen might be much older than herself, but she wasn’t very smart. She took the girl’s hand and led her over to her bed.

  ‘It’s okay. I’ll forgive you. But you’ve got to learn about washing and stuff,’ she said softly. ‘It’s important. No one likes smelly people, it’s horrible. So you’ve got to do what I tell you.’

  Later that night when the light was turned off, Rosie thought how ironic her situation was. Maureen really believed she came from a nice home, with a proper bathroom, and that a loving mother had given her all the knowledge on feminine matters that Rosie had passed on to her.

  Rosie wondered what the older girl would think if she was to get a glimpse of May Cottage in the middle of winter when her father and brothers’ boots turned the kitchen floor into a sea of mud. If she saw them coming in late at night, drunk as lords, vomiting into the sink or even on the floor, or if she found herself on the receiving end of their foul language. She wished she could admit that most of her knowledge came from women’s magazines, that bath night for Rosie had been a tin bath on the kitchen floor, and that until a few months ago her knickers had been only suitable for rags and no one in their right mind would want to borrow them. Maureen had said too how much she admired her fancy table manners and Rosie almost laughed aloud. Mrs Bentley could take the credit for those!

  After Rosie had made some tea and Maureen had had a bath, she’d opened up more about herself, telling Rosie about the man who had raped her and how she had ended up in a lunatic asylum. It was a harrowing story and one she guessed the girl had never told anyone else. It was so very tempting then to admit to her own background if only to point out that people could actually learn to live differently.

  But she hadn’t, and she never would. One thing she had learned in recent months was that you shouldn’t put complete trust in anyone. Miss Pemberton, Thomas and Mr Bentley all invited trust. But Miss Pemberton had sent her here. For all she knew Mr Bentley might betray her later on if the price was right. Thomas seemed to have changed his mind about being her friend. She couldn’t trust anyone but herself.

  Almost two weeks later and a whole week into her father’s trial Rosie discovered just how fragile her invented past was, and the dangers of letting people get too close to her.

  It was Sunday evening and all the girls who were not on duty had gathered in the staff sitting-room after tea. Linda, Mary and Maureen were there, along with Gladys Thorpe, one of the nurses. The room was intended for all the staff but in practice it was only the younger ones who used it.

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p; Present and past staff had done their best to make this room a cosy retreat by adding pictures, cushions and books, but their widely differing tastes and furniture which had been passed on by well-intentioned people when they grew tired of its ugliness or shabbiness, gave it a forlorn air. Bars on the window, a noticeboard with staff rotas and Matron’s many curt memos were a constant reminder that they were all almost as institutionalized as the patients upstairs.

  Sundays seemed twice as long as any other day because for some reason for which no one could offer an explanation, the patients always played up.

  There were theories: that there were fewer domestic staff on duty and therefore the chargehands were distracted by having to fill in for them. Because a vicar came and gave a service in the day room, or that this was the day visitors usually called and brought back to the patients vague memories of life before Carrington Hall.

  Whatever the reason, there were always more puddles on the floor, messed pants, tantrums and fights. So when six o’clock came, all the staff coming off duty were too weary to do anything but flop into chairs and commiserate with one another. Fortunately Matron always went to Evensong, and rarely came home before ten because she had supper afterwards with a friend, so they tended to gather in the staff room drinking endless cups of tea and smoking cigarettes until minutes before she returned.

  Rosie’s run-in with Matron had moved her up a couple of notches in the other members of staff’s estimation. As they saw it, she’d not only been courageous enough to stand up to Matron, but she hadn’t said a word against Maureen afterwards to anyone and had even managed to persuade the girl to wash at last.

  All of them were aware that Matron was out to get Rosie – she didn’t take kindly to one of her staff showing her up – and this bothered them. The only way they had of showing their allegiance to Rosie was by befriending her, sharing tea and cake after work and by encouraging her to tell them about herself.

  After being lonely and isolated for so long, Rosie found it wonderful to not only find herself accepted but liked, so when the other girls asked her questions about her home and family, she had to give them something more than just a skeleton story. Without really being aware of it she slipped into describing an almost fairytale childhood in a pretty cottage with a doting father and maiden aunt looking after her. In one or two moments of nostalgia she told true stories about her father, allowing them to glimpse his joviality, strength and charismatic personality. It pleased her to see that they liked the man she portrayed, and it soothed her sense of loss.

  But as the trial began, and Seth and Cole Parker became almost as infamous as Jack the Ripper, Rosie was brought down to earth with a bump and forced to see the worst aspects of her family. Everyone at Carrington Hall, from Matron right down to the lowest domestic, was avidly following the trial. They listened to the news on the wireless and read all the newspapers. Each day as some new revelation came to light, it was chewed over at length, and because Rosie came from Somerset and they supposed she might have some inside information, she was often asked for her opinions. Rosie shrugged off their questions with pretended disinterest, but the burden of knowing so much became heavier and more distressing each day.

  On Thursday when Ethel Parker was called to the witness stand to give evidence of her husband’s cruelty, Rosie found it almost impossible to keep her views and knowledge to herself.

  Ethel was forty-eight now, and the court artist’s sketches captured not only her gaunt face and grey hair, but also the livid scar on her cheek which she claimed was caused by Cole holding a hot flat iron to it. Rosie had looked at this picture in stunned disbelief. The woman bore no resemblance to the raven-haired beauty she’d heard gossiped about in Catcott, and her vitriolic account of her violent and unhappy marriage didn’t match up to the accounts Rosie had heard of the artistic and fun-loving woman from neighbours. Ethel made much of being forced to run away and leave her sons, yet under cross-examination it transpired she had indeed run off with another man, and in eighteen years had made no attempt to discover how her boys were. Even as she stood in the witness box with Seth just feet away from her in the dock, it was reported that she showed no emotion at being confronted by the son she’d abandoned so long ago.

  Today the Sunday papers had gone to town on the story, with headlines like ‘The Marsh Murders’ and ‘Satan in Somerset’, and there were background profiles on Ethel, Ruby and Heather, so that inevitably the evening’s conversation turned to them.

  Linda took centre stage as she lay on the settee, cigarette in hand, a newspaper on her lap. ‘I reckon both Blackwell and Farley were gold-diggers,’ she said airily, blowing smoke rings towards the ceiling. ‘I don’t mean I think that gave the Parkers a right to kill ‘em for it. But if I was a man and I ‘ad a few bob, I’d be savage when I found out that’s all they were after.’

  ‘What on earth makes you think that?’ Mary asked incredulously.

  ‘Well, look at their backgrounds,’ Linda said, pointing to the newspaper. ‘They both came from the East End of London, they ‘ad nothing before they ended up as his ‘ousekeeper. I come from there. I know ‘ow it is. You can’t tell me they thought, “Ah, the poor man needs ‘elp with ‘is motherless children.” They saw it as a way of getting a good, easy life.’

  ‘If that’s what they wanted,’ Gladys said gently, ‘why didn’t they clear off the moment they discovered it wasn’t going to be like that?’

  In the three weeks Rosie had been here she had learned a great deal about the other girls’ characters in discussions like this. Linda had lived through the war in the East End of London, and though her family had been rehoused out in Romford in 1945, she had retained a tough, cynical view on life. Rosie often wondered why she came here to work. She wasn’t a carer by nature, her personality was better-suited to working in a factory than kowtowing to the likes of Matron Barnes. But whenever Rosie had tried to broach the subject Linda had just laughed and claimed it was easy work.

  Mary, on the other hand, had been well educated at a convent in Ireland, but she was a romantic dreamer, soft-hearted, lazy and gullible too. She had come here with the intention of filling in time before nursing training, but for one reason or another – it seemed to Rosie to be mainly because of falling in love frequently – she hadn’t moved on.

  Nurse Gladys Thorpe was a kindly but dim girl of twenty-six, the oldest in the room. The other girls, perhaps unkindly, said she’d gone into training as a psychiatric nurse because she hadn’t got the brains for general nursing. She was the plodding type who didn’t look ahead any further than her next pay-day. Placid, unimaginative and plain as a pikestaff with a moon-like face and lumpy body, Rosie felt she’d still be here in another twenty years.

  ‘They stayed because they knew Parker ‘ad money tucked away somewhere,’ Linda argued. ‘They were working out ‘ow to get their ‘ands on it.’

  ‘You’re daft, Linda,’ Mary piped up indignantly. ‘Women don’t think like that. They must have fallen in love with him. Why else would they both have had a child by him?’

  ‘Because they were both tarts and I reckon Farley knew ‘e’d killed Blackwell.’

  Rosie had distanced herself from this conversation, steeling herself to make no comment whatever the other girls said. But at the insult to Heather her anger rose. ‘Neither of them were tarts, and of course Heather didn’t know what Parker had done to Ruby. She was a simple girl.’ Rosie stopped short, suddenly aware that by using the women’s Christian names and speaking out with such passion, she’d revealed not only her interest but perhaps some secret knowledge of the women.

  There was absolute silence for a moment, the other girls looking at one another in surprise.

  ‘You seem to know a lot,’ Maureen said, looking at her curiously.

  ‘I don’t,’ Rosie said hastily. She was particularly wary of Maureen, she might be virtually illiterate but she was quick to pick up on intrigue. ‘I just don’t like people speaking ill of the dead.’

>   ‘ ’Ow the ‘ell do you know that Farley was simple?’ Linda asked pointedly, her dark eyes narrowed. ‘I’ve never read that anywhere.’

  ‘I come from down that way, remember.’ Rosie wished the floor would open up and swallow her. ‘You hear things on the grapevine; everyone was talking about the women when the bodies were found.’

  The conversation resumed but Rosie was painfully aware that all the girls were watching for any further reaction from her. She tried to black out what they were saying, but each time she heard something she knew to be untrue, her stomach contracted agonizingly.

  She had read every single account of the trial, trying hard to keep an open mind. She doubted the truth of a great deal of the vindictive things that Ethel Parker had said about Cole, and in fact the defence lawyer had argued that the scar on her face was a fairly recent one, certainly not one of eighteen years’ standing. Yet Rosie knew the police evidence to be sound, and who would have killed the two women and buried them on Parker land, other than the Parkers? So she hovered in uncertainty, waiting for something which would finally prove their guilt or innocence.

  Meanwhile, however, the press were creating a background to the story which prevented anyone else from being fair-minded. May Cottage had been recreated as a kind of hell-hole, a dark and sinister place where its sub-human residents wallowed in filth and perversion, and imprisoned young women against their will.

  Rosie remembered how clean the kitchen had been, the well-scrubbed floor and table, Heather’s bright curtains at the window, Ruby’s crocheted rugs – even Ethel had left behind hand-painted storage jars up on a shelf. Were those the work of unwilling slaves?

  She could see in her mind’s eye Cole smiling into Heather’s eyes at the Harvest Home. She could hear their laughter as they repapered the bedrooms that first summer. She could visualize the orchard in springtime when pink and white blossom fluttered down on to the grass like confetti, and Heather running barefoot through it shouting to Rosie how much she loved it. She wished there was some way she could create a few of those prettier images for the jury.