Rosie

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘You know that Parker family, don’t you?’ Maureen said in an accusatory tone.

  Rosie felt another cold chill go down her spine.

  ‘What on earth makes you think that?’ she said quickly, hoping she wasn’t blushing.

  ‘Because you haven’t once talked about them, like we all do. And I know it was that news which made you go all faint.’

  ‘You’ve got too much imagination for your own good,’ Rosie said with a sniff. That phrase had been a favourite one of her teacher’s, and it seemed appropriate now. ‘If you must know, I think there’s something weird about people who are obsessed with murder. Now for heaven’s sake stop keeping on at me.’

  Rosie was very glad she’d had her day off changed to Friday, as it meant that the next day she’d be able to get out of Carrington Hall and escape any further discussion. But even though she wanted to just walk in the countryside, she awoke to find it pouring with rain and the library seemed the only sensible place to go.

  There were no more than four or five people in the whole place, and only one old man reading the newspapers. Rosie hung her soaking raincoat up on a peg, and taking a seat as far away from the old man as possible, read one paper after another until she felt she had the complete picture of what had taken place in the courtroom over the past weeks.

  She wondered how her father could stick to his plea of innocence, when he freely admitted that he was hot-tempered and sometimes hit women. He hadn’t denied any of the things Ethel said he did, except branding her with a hot iron, which had been virtually discounted by medical evidence anyway. His coarse words were that ‘she asked for trouble’. His barrister managed to cast doubt on her testimony because she ran off with another man and showed no concern for her children. But where Ruby and Heather were concerned, he could offer nothing substantial to sway the jury into believing in his client’s innocence, other than that Cole had no reason to kill them.

  The barrister had played long and hard on Cole’s fierce masculinity and asked him questions to try and bring out his deep shame and hurt that two more women he loved had left him, to try and show that this was the only reason he hadn’t reported their disappearance. But Cole had remained unemotional and inarticulate. His plea that he was afraid his daughter might have been taken away from him didn’t ring entirely true, particularly as he had freely admitted he had no time for Alan.

  When the prosecution summed up the evidence there was really no debate or deliberation necessary to find him guilty. As the barrister pointed out, ‘Maybe someone with a grudge against Cole Parker could have come to the cottage and killed his women. But were they then likely to bury the women tidily and efficiently on his land, all before he got back from his work?’

  Rosie could just about accept that her father may have killed both women in a fit of temper because they said or did something he didn’t like. But when she read the lies that both her brothers had told about Heather she almost screamed out her anger right there in the library. They claimed that Heather was a loose, slovenly girl who had preyed on their father’s vulnerability, citing how quickly she had ended up in his bed and produced another child for him to keep. According to them she drank cider all day, and they’d heard it rumoured that men were seen calling at the cottage during the day when they were out. Seth even said he believed Alan wasn’t Cole’s son.

  Rosie’s heart went out to Thomas. She could imagine what it had done to him to hear such filth. She had never been more ashamed and disgusted by her brothers.

  When Norman spoke of the night he and Cole had come home from Birmingham to find Ruby gone, he was speaking the truth, because it was just as Rosie remembered it. She had been left with a neighbour called Mrs Mirrel that day, while Ruby went to visit a sick friend. Norman said Cole had only said Ruby was killed in an air raid because he thought Rosie could deal with death better than abandonment.

  Norman could not comment about Heather’s disappearance as he was away doing his National Service, but he’d been told that his sister had come home from school to find Heather and her belongings gone and baby Alan still strapped in his pram down in the orchard.

  The prosecution drew Norman’s attention to the testimonies given by several neighbours and the village school mistress who all said that both women were conscientious mothers who would never walk away from their children. He asked Norman to consider this. Norman pointed out that these same neighbours had also claimed his own mother was conscientious, yet she most definitely had cleared off and left two small boys on their own.

  When Rosie saw a photograph of Seth grinning triumphantly outside Bristol court after his acquittal, she felt sick. He looked the way he always had when he’d got away with something. He didn’t even care that his father was on his way to a condemned cell. She knew then without any doubt that he was guilty. Maybe he hadn’t actually killed the women, but he had created the trouble which had led to Cole losing his temper. She was certain that he’d helped dig the graves too. Rosie just knew her father wouldn’t have gone through that alone.

  She spent the afternoon walking in the rain, unaware of where she was going, taking paths across fields as she came to them, almost blinded by tears. In a few weeks’ time her father would be hanged in Bristol prison, his body sprinkled with quick lime and buried there without a marker or prayers.

  But it was her own guilt which stabbed her like a knife through the heart. She should have gone to the police and told them about Seth, just as she should have told her father what she’d seen Seth and Norman do to Heather when it happened. She should have been brave enough to insist on being a witness; perhaps if she’d been able to tell the judge and jury her view of her family, the outcome might have been different.

  But it was too late now. Seth couldn’t be tried for the same crime again. It wouldn’t save her father and all it would do would be to hurt Thomas more.

  She wondered how Thomas felt today? Another less sensitive man might celebrate, but she knew he would be too keenly hurt by the things her brothers had said about Heather to even feel satisfaction at the verdict. She doubted she would ever hear from him again.

  There was no doubt in her mind either that Seth and Norman would soon be in some sort of trouble again, now they no longer had their father to hide behind. She never wanted to see either of them again as long as she lived.

  As Rosie was walking through rain-sodden fields, crying to herself, Matron was in her sitting-room, her stockinged feet up on a stool in front of an electric fire, smiling triumphantly to herself.

  The newspaper was on her lap, but she’d read everything she wanted to. She knew now who Rosemary Smith was.

  There was no hard or fast proof of course, just guesswork, and a couple of pointed remarks from Maureen Jackson. But nurses and doctors often made an accurate diagnosis based on nothing more than a few symptoms, some pertinent questions, and guesswork.

  The girl was the right age, from the right area, shielded by a social worker, and of course mental homes were ideal places to hide away misfits. They hadn’t even had the intelligence to change her name dramatically. Rosemary Smith was Rosie Parker, the only daughter of the man dubbed the ‘Moorland Monster’.

  But what was she going to do with the knowledge?

  Her first thought had been to call a staff meeting and denounce her in public now while the news was hot. But after a moment or two’s thought she guessed Lionel would be very angry with her if she did that. If it got around it might place the future of Carrington Hall in jeopardy. Besides, just throwing the girl out would be a hollow victory. On top of that the girl was also a good worker and she’d be hard to replace.

  Weighing it all up, Freda thought she’d do just what she always did when a juicy bit of information came her way and keep it to herself for the time being. It might be a trump card to have up her sleeve at a later date. She folded the pages of the paper containing the story and pictures of the Parker men and tucked them away in her desk.

  On Saturday morning of
the following week Matron swept into the day room just as Rosie and Simmonds were stacking the breakfast things on to the trolley. Maureen was moving the chairs back against the wall assisted by Donald. The rest of the patients were scattered around the room, some merely standing and staring at nothing, others in chairs rocking themselves. Tabby was knitting frantically. It was tipping down with rain outside again and both Rosie and Maureen had already discussed that it would be a long day today as they wouldn’t be able to take any of the patients out into the garden.

  ‘Smith, come here,’ Matron said curtly.

  Rosie moved over to the older woman, expecting some sort of complaint. She hadn’t been herself all week, even though she’d tried to hide it. The least little thing had set her off crying – a difficult patient, a sharp word from one of the other girls – and her mind had been continually on her father, imagining him in that cell awaiting death.

  Her sixteenth birthday had come and gone and she hadn’t had the heart to mention it to anyone, much less plan some kind of celebration. There had been a white fluffy angora jumper from Miss Pemberton and a nice card signed by Auntie Molly, but that was all and so it had gone unnoticed by everyone.

  Even the weather depressed her; it had rained almost constantly, the trees were losing their leaves and when she looked out of the windows the views were as bleak and cheerless as her future. She thought Matron must have heard she was off-colour and was going to take her to task for it.

  To her surprise, Matron smiled at her. It completely changed her face, everything grew wider, her eyes and her mean mouth, and for a brief second she actually looked quite attractive.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Cook, Donald’s parents, are coming to see him this afternoon,’ she said in a low, almost conspiratorial tone. ‘I want you to make sure he has a bath, and give him his best clothes. I’d also like you to accompany him for the visit. Mrs Trow will let you know when they arrive.’

  ‘Yes, Matron,’ Rosie replied. When a patient had guests, a chargehand or nurse had to be present throughout the entire visit. Rosie had heard about patients who got agitated, sometimes violent when relatives called, but in Donald’s case this was very unlikely. She wondered why Matron was singling her out for a job which normally went to the senior staff.

  ‘Make sure your apron is clean and your hair neat and tidy,’ Matron said, looking her up and down. ‘I want to create a good impression for the Cooks. I told them on the telephone that you seem to have formed a close relationship with Donald, and it was they who requested to meet you.’

  Coming from anyone else, Rosie would have considered this praise. But Matron was a very odd woman and Rosie had a feeling that today was to be some kind of test.

  ‘Can I tell Donald?’ Rosie asked. ‘Or will you?’

  ‘You can inform him, but for goodness’ sake don’t get him too excited,’ she said as she turned to walk away.

  It would have been too much to expect Matron to just leave without finding fault with anything. Ignoring Alice who shuffled over to speak to her, she crossed to the windows and ran one finger along the sill, moved a couple of chairs and sniffed.

  ‘The chairs are supposed to be moved when the floor is washed over,’ she said tartly. ‘Jackson! The hem of your uniform is coming down. Fix it before I catch sight of it again.’

  ‘Witch,’ Maureen muttered once the woman had left, Simmonds close behind her with the breakfast trolley. ‘Have you noticed she never even speaks to the patients, you’d think they were just bits of furniture. What did she want you for?’

  Linda often joked that Maureen would be a natural successor to Matron if she learned to read. She certainly made it her business, like Matron, to know everything that went on in Carrington Hall. Yet Rosie thought Linda was too harsh; in her view Maureen was to be pitied because she was in fact more like one of the inmates than a member of staff. Because of this Rosie never told her to mind her own business when she asked questions, as the others did. So she related the entire conversation between her and Matron.

  ‘Why did she pick on me do you think?’ she asked.

  Maureen shrugged. ‘Search me! But don’t complain, Mr and Mrs Cook are nice and you’ll have a far better afternoon than I will up here. Some people get all the luck.’

  Donald got very excited when Rosie told him the news. He jumped around the day room like a kangaroo and finally flopped down on his back, drumming his heels noisily on the floor.

  Rosie suddenly felt a little better as she watched Donald with affectionate amusement. She felt he had the personality and behaviour of a large puppy. Many of the patients like Aggie and Archie still repelled her, some were exasperating, but Donald was just lovable. If he wasn’t nearly six feet tall, and didn’t have to shave every day, anyone could just think of him as a child. He had been assessed as having a mental age of eight, but Rosie had discovered he could read a little and she was privately convinced that if books, jigsaw puzzles and board games were provided in the day room, then he could learn a great deal more than he already knew.

  ‘Get up, Donald,’ she said, resisting the temptation to tickle him and make him laugh more. ‘You can come and help me with the cleaning and making the beds. If you carry on like that all morning, everyone will get cross with you. Me included.’

  One of the saddest things of all in Carrington Hall, as far as Rosie was concerned, was that all the patients were lumped together and treated as being on the same level as the most severely retarded ones. Even though she’d only been here for such a short time, with no previous experience of people with mental handicaps, she felt there should be times in the day when the more able ones should be separated and given things to do. She had suggested this to Mary once, but she just laughed at her, and said Matron wouldn’t like it because they’d need more staff.

  Rosie wasn’t brave enough to do anything Matron didn’t like; she sensed that would be asking for trouble. Besides, no one else on the staff shared her views; they all liked to just sit, chat, read, or knit while the patients shuffled about aimlessly. Even Maureen, who did talk to them, was as bone idle as the rest. That was why Rosie ended up doing almost all of the daily cleaning.

  But Rosie had worked on Donald quite a bit, particularly during the last week when she’d wanted something to take her mind off her father. She had brought in a gardening book to read and showed Donald the pictures of the flowers, getting him to learn many of the names. Another time she had let him do a dot-to-dot puzzle in a magazine and had been surprised to find that he recognized most numbers. In the main, however, her progress with Donald had been in talking to him as they made the beds and cleaned. Sometimes he dropped the stuttering for long periods and he loved playing a game with her where she made up a few lines of a story, then made him finish it. Sadly his imagination didn’t stretch beyond Carrington Hall. She might start a story with two little girls going on a train to London, eating their sandwiches and having a drink of lemonade, but invariably when he continued it would always be with something like, ‘Then Matron told them to put on their shoes and coats because it was time to go down to the garden.’

  Perhaps it was purely because she knew her father would never see the outside world again that her thoughts had turned to wanting freedom for Donald. He had done nothing wrong, yet he was imprisoned too and it wasn’t fair. She wished that she could take him out to the shops, or just for a walk in the countryside, to buy him a comic, take him on a bus, or let him see a field of cows. She wondered if she might get a chance to broach this subject with the Cooks.

  As they washed over the dormitory floor that morning, Rosie sang to Donald. She began with ‘Molly Malone’, then as that pleased him she sang ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’.

  ‘I kn-kn-know that one,’ he said, interrupting her. To her surprise he began to sing along with her, no stutter, no hesitation, and he knew most of the words.

  ‘Who taught you that song?’ she asked, after they’d been through it several times.

  ‘Mother,’ he sai
d and his face glowed with pleasure. ‘Sh-sh-she used to s-s-sing it when I went to b-b-bed.’

  Rosie prompted him to tell her more. He remembered feeding ducks, going on a swing and rolling out pastry.

  Some of the other patients occasionally recalled things from their childhood. Tabby remembered the seaside, Archie talked about trains, but their reminiscing was very disjointed and it was impossible to guess how old they were at the time, or even who they’d been with. With Donald the memories were very lucid. She felt the song had been the key which unlocked them and Rosie wondered briefly just how much more she could achieve with him if she had a free hand.

  At two-thirty Mrs Trow came to say that Mr and Mrs Cook were waiting downstairs. Donald had been bathed, his hair washed and his fingernails cleaned before dinner. Now in his own pale blue sweater, grey flannel slacks and a white open-necked shirt he looked very smart, quite different from how he looked every other day. He held Rosie’s hand very tightly as they went downstairs, and she was almost as nervous as he was.

  The visitors’ sitting-room overlooked the front garden. Because of so many trees growing close to the window, it was a rather dark room, but as it was raining hard outside and someone had lit a cheerful fire, it looked very cosy and, compared to the austerity of the rest of the building, extremely comfortable.

  Mr and Mrs Cook were both older than Rosie had expected; she thought they were in their early sixties. Mr Cook was a big man, with a ruddy complexion and a large stomach. Although his hair was thin and grey he had very dark bushy eyebrows which gave an impression of sternness. His wife was a small, dainty woman dressed in a dark blue fitted coat and a matching cloche hat. Her hair was more white than grey, indicating she had been a blonde like her son, and her skin was very soft-looking, not lined exactly but more like a peach once it is past its best.