Rosie

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘I wonder what they’ve done with Parker’s other two children?’ Gladys said thoughtfully some time later. ‘I bet they could tell a few tales!’

  ‘Stuck them away behind bars somewhere I ‘ope,’ Linda said. ‘They ‘aven’t got an ‘ope in ‘ell of being normal.’

  Again Rosie felt anger rising, but she squashed it down firmly.

  ‘The little boy’s probably too young to be affected that much,’ Mary said with a deep sigh. ‘But the girl must know the whole truth. I wouldn’t be in her shoes, not for all the tea in China. I’d want to top myself with a father and brother like that.’

  During the second week of the trial Rosie felt nauseous almost all the time. She went through the days automatically, doing what she was asked to, cleaning, feeding, making beds, wiping up urine and chivvying the patients along. But her heart and mind were in that courtroom a hundred miles away.

  Thomas gave his evidence and in the course of it he spoke of his meeting with her at May Cottage. She couldn’t help thinking that, but for her disobeying her father that day by speaking to a stranger, Cole and Seth wouldn’t be in the dock now, and she’d still be in ignorance of the fate that both Ruby and Heather had met. Yet even as she thought it, she felt ashamed of trying to bury her head in the sand. Maybe they weren’t proved to be murderers yet, but they had been cruel to Alan and she ought to be glad that through her one act of disobedience he’d been rescued.

  The newspapers maximized on Thomas, with a photograph of him when he first joined the army and then another taken soon after his camp in Burma was liberated. She was struck by his similarity to Heather in the first picture, the thick fair hair, the wide smiling mouth and plump cheeks. In the second picture taken just five years later, he was unrecognizable, almost skeletal, a lined and weary face, leaning on crutches with his amputated leg bound in bandages, old before his time.

  Rosie guessed that Thomas must be cruelly embarrassed by this tug on people’s emotions, and it brought it home to her that long, long after this trial was over, people would still remember his part in it. She was certain their friendship was now over. She wondered if he could even bear to still see Alan.

  It was the court artist’s sketches of Cole and Seth, however, which demonstrated to her just how confused she was. Seth’s true character showed in the insolent way he lolled in the dock. The events of that last day at May Cottage came back with such force she trembled from head to foot. She could believe every last thing he was suspected of. She wanted him found guilty.

  But the sketches of her father made her melt inside. There was dignity in the upright way he sat, not insolence. His dark eyes seemed to say to her that whatever other bad things he’d done in his life, he hadn’t bludgeoned her mother and Heather to death as the police said he had.

  It was hard to resist cutting out just one of these pictures, a keepsake to hold on to for old times’ sake, but even that was denied her because of Matron’s prying. She wished too that she could see him one last time, to put aside what was happening now and just be father and daughter again.

  On the Friday evening of that same week Rosie went into Linda’s and Mary’s room. Mary was lying on her bed reading the Evening News, dressed and made up to go out dancing in a pale blue satin sheath dress, but with her hair still in curlers. Linda was standing in front of the mirror wearing an off-the-shoulder ‘Goosegirl’ blouse and a red circular skirt, straining to reach behind her to dab some angry-looking spots on her upper back with Pan Stik make-up.

  ‘Do this for me?’ she pleaded, pushing the stick into Rosie’s hands. ‘I can’t reach. But mind you don’t get any on me blouse.’

  Rosie complied, but as she glanced over to Mary she noticed she was reading something about the trial. ‘What’s the latest?’ she asked, hoping she sounded casual enough.

  ‘It looks like the son couldn’t have been in on it,’ Mary said without looking up. ‘Some farmer gave evidence that he was working for him ‘til gone seven on the day Ruby Blackwell went missing. I’m beginning to feel sorry for him. It sounds like he had a terrible childhood.’

  Rosie’s hands shook.

  ‘Watch what you’re doing!’ Linda screeched as she saw Rosie behind her in the mirror waving the Pan Stik dangerously near her blouse.

  Rosie pulled herself together and apologized. She wished she could grab the paper from Mary’s hands and read it herself, but she knew she’d have to wait until they’d gone out.

  ‘She’d say Jack the Ripper was a good sort really, if she ‘eard his mother drank and went with men,’ Linda said, checking over her shoulder in the mirror to see Rosie had done her job properly. ‘But for once I’m going along with her. The son was too young, for a start; you can’t tell me a sixteen-year-old boy could ‘elp his dad with something like that and never let it slip to anyone.’

  Rosie felt a cold chill running down her spine. She knew Seth was perfectly capable of doing just that. He might be many things, but he’d never been a blabbermouth; none of the Parkers was, herself included. ‘Can I read it when you’ve finished?’ she asked Mary.

  Mary made a disapproving face. ‘You should be coming out with us, not staying in and reading papers,’ she said. ‘What’s the point in working in London if you never go out the door?’

  ‘I do go out the door,’ Rosie protested. ‘I just can’t dance and I’d only show you up.’

  ‘Then we’ll teach you on Sunday night,’ Linda said, fixing a wide black belt round her middle and pulling it in tight. ‘You only need to know the waltz and the cha-cha, none of the blokes can do anything else. Now, ‘ow do I look?’

  Rosie smiled. Linda looked plain by day, but after setting her dark hair in pin curls and putting on some make-up she was suddenly transformed into a voluptuous glamour girl.

  ‘Like a beauty queen,’ she said. ‘Now can I have the paper?’

  Mary threw it at her. ‘So you’re just as hooked on it as us!’ she said triumphantly.

  ‘I’m not,’ Rosie insisted. ‘I want to look at Situations Vacant so I can leave this madhouse.’

  ‘Then pick out a job for all three of us,’ Mary laughed. ‘Somewhere with good pay, little work and lots of men!’

  It was absolutely silent on the staff landing once Linda and Mary had gone out. Maureen and Gladys were down in the staff room listening to the wireless, and if Staff Nurse Aylwood was in her room further along the landing she was as quiet as always. Rosie stretched out on her bed and read the report on Seth’s defence, relieved that she was unlikely to be interrupted.

  Earlier in the trial the prosecution had made much of Seth’s reputation as a fighter, troublemaker and bully, driving home the point that he idolized his father and emulated his behaviour. The barrister defending Rosie’s half-brother didn’t seek to deny these charges, but set out to show that Seth had another gentler side which he chose to hide because he was afraid of his father.

  He questioned Seth at length about the two years after Ethel Parker had left May Cottage, when he and his younger brother had been left to fend for themselves, often hungry, always neglected. By the time he got to the point where Ruby arrived, Seth’s answers implied that the nine-year-old boy saw her as a longed-for replacement mother. He spoke of her cooking meals, knitting him warm jumpers and making the house a real home again, including the addition to their family of a new baby sister.

  A tear ran down Rosie’s cheek as she heard Seth’s fond words about her mother. She believed it all because it struck a chord about the joy she’d experienced when Heather came into her life. As the barrister probed ever more deeply into the years when she was a small child, she was chastened to hear Seth’s affectionate references to both her mother and herself and she felt she may have misjudged him. She certainly didn’t think he could have killed the woman he obviously had such a high regard for.

  As Mary had already said, there was a testimony from the farmer in Bridgwater that Seth had worked on his barn all that week in which Ruby disappeared, and his f
arm accounts in which Seth’s wages had been paid to Cole were submitted as evidence. The barrister played on this for some time, showing that between fourteen and eighteen, Seth worked long hours out in all weathers, but yet was paid no wages by his father for his efforts, only a scant amount of pocket money. He then went on to draw attention to Seth’s excellent National Service record, suggesting that but for the boy’s fear of displeasing his father, he would have become a mechanic in civilian life and moved away to the city to become self-sufficient.

  Moving on to the time of Heather’s death, he laboured heavily on the point that Seth was in Bristol working all that week, and that he stood to gain nothing by killing the woman, only becoming more firmly entrenched in helping his father run his business and taking more responsibility for the younger children.

  As the prosecution had previously brought up Seth’s alleged cruelty to Alan and Rosie, the defence had no choice but to come back to it. To her surprise Seth didn’t attempt to deny it, but somehow the carefully worded questions on the subject created the image that her brother was merely acting on his father’s behalf, endeavouring to instil some order in a household where all sense of discipline and orderliness had flown. He sounded severe, but caring.

  Rosie lay on her bed for a long time after reading the newspaper, her head and heart reeling with conflicting emotions. She didn’t think Seth could have killed her mother or even known about her death. He was the same age then as she was now, too young for such things. But she wasn’t so sure of his innocence in Heather’s death. Looking back she recalled Heather often saying he bitterly resented her, and Rosie remembered so well how much happier all of them had been once he went into the army.

  In that moment she suddenly saw how wrong she was not to tell Sergeant Headly or even Miss Pemberton everything about Seth. Maybe that scene she’d witnessed in her father’s bedroom did not prove he helped her father to murder Heather, but it showed quite clearly what kind of a man he had grown into. The police still believed that the beating Rosie received from her brother was merely for making Alan run away. If they’d known the whole story the prosecution might have taken on a whole new turn, and Seth’s barrister wouldn’t be able to sway the jury into believing he was just a simple-minded country boy who lived in fear of his father’s displeasure.

  But what could she do now? Miss Pemberton had gone to great lengths to keep her out of the trial. And Thomas too! What would it do to him to hear that both Seth and Norman had raped his sister?

  Rosie awoke in the night from a terrible nightmare. She was walking down a dark street towards some brightly lit shops at the end, when suddenly Seth came up behind her. She ran and ran, but instead of reaching the safety of the shops, they seemed to move further and further away, and Seth was closing in on her. He grabbed her round the waist and flung her down to the ground; she saw his grinning face looming above her and his mouth coming down on her throat as if to tear it out like a mad dog. Just as his teeth sunk into her flesh, she woke up.

  As she lay awake, too frightened to close her eyes again for fear the dream would continue, she remembered that her father knew about Seth and Norman. It was up to him to reveal it, and if he then asked that she be called to the witness stand she would go.

  But however much she wanted to believe in her father’s innocence, and however distressed she was that he hadn’t yet given his lawyer anything substantial to fight his cause with, she had to face the unpalatable truth that he must have murdered both women and that Seth was almost certainly involved too. There was no escaping that.

  It made her realize it was time that she thought of herself. As Sister Dowd and Thomas had pointed out, she wasn’t responsible for anyone’s deeds but her own. She would be sixteen very soon, old enough to decide on her own future. Perhaps then she should make a clean break with the past, forget her disreputable family and move on somewhere else, leaving everyone, even those who had sought to help her, behind.

  The next morning as she got up, Rosie discovered her periods had started. But as she looked at her blood-smeared nightdress, she felt no dismay, just a kind of confirmation that her thoughts during the night had been rational, adult ones. For the first time ever she felt as if she was in control of her life. And she had no intention of letting anyone take that control from her.

  Chapter Seven

  Freda Barnes was not a very intelligent woman, but what she lacked in brain power, she made up for in guile and determination. Her father had been a doctor with a country practice in Herefordshire. Until she was fourteen and the First World War broke out, her childhood had been a very pleasant one. Although her father wasn’t rich and their home was a little shabby, they had a maid, and a governess who came in daily to teach herself and her three sisters. Because of her father’s position all five girls were often invited to many of the wealthier neighbours’ homes for parties, picnics, dances and tennis. Freda had always assumed that in the fullness of time she would turn into a beauty like her two older sisters and that one of the sons from these rather grand houses would ask to marry her.

  But the war changed everything. Her father felt compelled to offer his services for the good of his country, and one by one she saw all the young men in the neighbourhood join up too as patriotic fever swept through the small villages. Her mother upbraided her many times for being far more distressed by the lack of parties or tennis partners than by the casualty lists posted weekly in the village. She said it was high time Freda thought about someone other than herself and ordered her to roll up her sleeves and give a hand at the surgery, helping out old Dr Mayhew who’d come out of retirement to take her father’s place.

  Freda grudgingly complied with her mother’s wishes, and waited for the war to end so everything would get back to normal. But her father didn’t come back from France, he contracted cholera and died in 1917 while helping the wounded in the trenches.

  She was eighteen when the war finally ended, but to her dismay she saw that life was never going to return to how it had been before, and she felt bitter and resentful. She hadn’t even turned into a beauty. Her hair was lank, straight and mousy; she had a plain face with thin lips and close-set eyes. While her sisters had hourglass figures and shapely legs, she was as hefty as a carthorse. Fewer than a quarter of the young men returned and many of them were mere shadows of the gallant gentlemen who’d joined up in 1914.

  The maid and the governess left soon after her father went to France, but on his death her mother could no longer afford to live in such a big house, and made plans to move into a small cottage. Rachel and Hester, her two older sisters, both went off to London and found jobs. Grace, the sister a year younger than Freda, married the son of a local farmer and her mother made it plain that Freda must pay her own way too.

  Dr Mayhew pulled some strings to get her trained as a nurse in Whittington Hospital in London. Freda had no desire to be a nurse, but it was better than being a shop girl or governess, and it was the only thing she had any experience of. She fully believed too it would be only a matter of time before she found a doctor to marry her so she could be the envy of her more attractive sisters.

  She barely scraped through her exams, but she had the kind of authority, breeding and poise that were admired by her matron. The years passed and slowly she worked her way up to becoming a staff nurse and finally sister. Freda loathed the children’s wards, and midwifery, though she spent a year specializing in each, still hoping for that elusive doctor to sweep her off her feet. She wasn’t keen on surgery either, and a spell in the theatre made her want to run away from nursing for good. She felt that life had cheated her; she didn’t see why her life was only work, with no hope of anything better. She wanted money and position, and she believed she deserved them.

  She had been on the point of moving into district nursing in 1931, when she attended a lecture on mental illness and saw the opportunities there.

  All the mental asylums were grossly overcrowded and badly run. The war had swelled the numbers of
patients and there were few nurses of Freda Barnes’s background anxious to enter into such a gloomy and unglamorous field. Freda had no desire to improve the lives of the mentally incompetent – as far as she was concerned they deserved to be locked away out of sight. But she thought there would be real possibilities to shoot up the ladder, even to the post of matron in a few short years.

  Freda was then thirty-one. She had come to realize that there was little chance now of making a good marriage; she was too plain and she had no fortune either. On top of that the country was in the grips of a depression. If she stayed in general nursing, it might be another twenty years before she saw herself rise higher than ward sister. So she applied for posts in several large mental hospitals, and settled for Stoke Park in Bristol because it seemed more civilized than any of the others.

  Hope turned to bitterness when she discovered that Stoke Park was a pioneering mental hospital, intent on breaking away from the barbaric image asylums had acquired. They were looking for dedicated and compassionate people in the senior positions, and hard, domineering women like Barnes were purposely overlooked in promotion. She hated everything about Stoke Park. The deranged patients, the common untrained women she had to work alongside, but most of all the young doctors hardly out of medical school who looked down their noses when she tried to instil some discipline into the place.

  Freda had been at Stoke Park for seven long, miserable years, when a chance meeting there with Lionel Brace-Coombes changed her life. He owned a small private mental home in London with the kind of genteel patients Freda could identify with. He appreciated her experience and background, and she charmed him into offering her a post of sister, a spacious flat of her own and excellent wages.