‘No, Richard.’
He shrugged and looked at her, wondering how to deal with her implacability. ‘We’ll discuss it later.’ Again he had felt the edge of determination in the quiet voice and he wondered if he dared explain. Perhaps not. He hardly knew this young woman, so much had happened to them both since the years in which he had been her protector and she his adoring friend. He forced a smile. This was going to be difficult.
He would have to be patient, although finances dictated that patience wouldn’t allow more than a week, or two at the most. A month and he would be edging towards bankruptcy and would have to sell all the properties he had struggled so hard to buy.
Coolly, he wondered if romance might be the answer. It wouldn’t be difficult to spend some time with her; she was a desirable woman. There was clearly a core of steel within her mind, of course. Perhaps around her heart too, but love had softened many a resistant heart.
They went back to the house, which both women had been loath to sell, even with the prospect of a third shop, and after coffee Rosita left Miss Grainger dealing with the cups and walked with him to the door. She was very aware of him as he leaned over and touched her cheek lightly with his lips.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he said. ‘I like your Miss Grainger very much. You’ve been lucky having a friend like her.’
‘I owe her everything,’ she said simply, the words coming from her head while her heart raced and silently pleaded for him to kiss her properly.
He leaned on the wooden gate that had replaced the metal one taken for wartime scrap, and looked back at her. The late-evening light disguised his expression, the trilby hat casting a shadow over his eyes, so she could only imagine the smile as he said, ‘Come out with me again, soon?’
‘Soon,’ she agreed. ‘Richard, will you promise me something?’
‘Anything.’
‘Promise not to tell Kate that I am her half-sister. The name I now use is Caroline Evans, so my real identity hasn’t registered with her yet. And of course after so long she doesn’t know me by sight. All the years between when I was five and now, neither Kate nor Hattie ever bothered about me. I don’t want them to suddenly become my sisters. Not now. Will you promise not to mention who I really am?’
‘If you’re sure, but I’d have thought that with no family, having someone—’
‘Promise me.’
He gave that expressive shrug of his and nodded. ‘I promise.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And will you promise me that you’ll think about what we’ve discussed?’
‘Goodnight, Richard.’ She turned and went in, closing the door without a final glance.
‘He has charm, your Richard Carey,’ Miss Grainger said when Rosita went inside. ‘D’you think we should sell to him? I think it’s more important than he admits.’
‘I thought I was so clever.’ Rosita sank into a chair and covered her cheeks with her hands. ‘When I heard that the other shops in the row were being bought up by a mystery buyer, that ours would be worth a lot more than the true value, I imagined us being able to demand a price much higher than we paid – from an anonymous stranger, a businessman who deserved to have to fight for his profit. I knew that if he bought the others then he was bound to want ours too. I tried to cheat the Careys by buying at a low price before they were approached by this mysterious buyer.’
‘Not cheat them, dear. You would never have seen them without. You’re a far better businesswoman than Henry Carey and half a dozen others combined. Our second shop is already worth more than we paid, without any deals.’
‘But they’d have made more if they’d waited.’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. I can’t see Henry haggling with anyone, can you? No, seeing the money waved in front of his face he’d have sold for less than you paid them, without a doubt.’
‘What shall we do?’
‘That depends on how you feel about Richard, I suppose. We should wait and, if we decide to sell, see how much we can raise his offer. But he must be stretched financially. There is the possibility that if we wait too long, Richard Carey might lose everything.’ She touched Rosita’s hand. ‘Could you cope with that?’ she asked gently.
‘No, I don’t think I could.’
‘Talk to him. Invite him here for a meal and I’ll go to the pictures. Whatever you decide will be all right by me. You know I trust your judgement absolutely.’
‘Thank you.’
The following day was a Thursday and, pleading a headache, Rosita left the office in the factory where she had worked for almost eleven years and caught the train over to the beach near Gull Island. It had always been her retreat, a place where she could go to think out a problem. Before buying the first shop and when she was working out the best way of approaching the purchase of the Careys’ business, it had always been done here, on the lonely stretch of rocky shoreline.
The sun blazed down on the rocks and it was difficult to find somewhere comfortable to sit. There wasn’t much shade and in desperation she walked to where Luke’s cottage stood, cool and inviting. Without much optimism she tried the door and found it unlocked. Feeling like a thief, she went inside.
Her mother had often talked about this place and the man who lived there called Luke. She remembered him vaguely, a thin, small man with a ridiculously extrovert sense of dress. She smiled, remembering his long beard and the odd spectacles, the casual corduroy trousers and the bare feet in leather sandals. She cast her mind back, seeing him as he jumped into his open-topped car. The leather jacket and the goggles that fitted over his glasses.
She sat in the chintz-covered chair and wondered where he was at that moment and whether he would remember her as readily. Closing her eyes she allowed the heat of the day to fade from her skin in a slow pulsing beat. It was a restful place. Simply furnished, in fact rather sparse, but there were some wild flowers in a vase on a polished table, beside a pile of books, the blooms almost dead, falling across the polished surface in a scattering of yellow dust. Someone came here often.
When she felt cool again, she took out a notebook from her handbag and began to write down roughly what she and Miss Grainger had spent since buying the Careys’ shop. To cover what they had invested on improvements and fresh stock, and the cost of the loan from the bank and the legal fees, they would need a couple of hundred pounds on top of what they had paid.
She threw down the pen in exasperation. This is stupid! Selling a business so soon after buying it would be against all business practice. She must refuse. Without the special deal she had hoped to make it was impossible. A business needed to be kept for a few years, nurtured and coaxed along, until the expense of taking over had been met, swallowed and a profit had been made. Unless the buyer was desperate and he needed the property so badly he would pay more than it was worth. She thought that was the case, until she learned that it was Richard Carey who was the desperate person in question. Now everything had changed.
She felt uneasy. Pride at her cleverness, excitement at what she intended to achieve had all changed to guilt in the moment when she had looked up and seen Richard. The move, so smart at the outset, seemed immoral now she knew the buyer. What had been a good business move, to sneak in and buy something she knew someone else wanted urgently, now seemed a terrible cheat. Damn Richard Carey. Why did he choose this moment to come back into her life?
The more she looked at the figures, the more she knew that it was impossible to sell. There were still bills coming in for various repairs they’d had to do. It would be the greatest folly to sell now.
An anonymous builder with a large corporation behind him would have been different. The costs would have been met from a large purse. She had anticipated staying for probably a year, then taking a generous offer and getting out and finding a shop better placed, or even two small kiosks. Now, everything had altered, as if stirred into a mish-mash by a giant spoon. She didn’t know what to do next.
The sun was still scorching as sh
e opened the door and went outside. With a stronger feeling of trespass, but knowing Luke would understand, she drew water from the pump and made herself a cup of tea. She remembered her mother telling her about the visits she had made. ‘No milk,’ Luke had warned her, ‘but with sugar it’s quite palatable.’
She sipped the brew and washed the cup. It was time to go. There was no point sitting here thinking of what she could or couldn’t do; better to go and help Kate with the evening rush. At least that would serve some purpose.
Crossing the narrow road that was little more than a track, she walked slowly along the rough surface of the beach, past the house where the Careys had once lived, jumping from rock to rock, choosing the most difficult route to distract her mind from her worries, until she came to the lane leading up to the station approach. Her shoes were scratched, the leather on the heels torn beyond repair. She was so distressed by the decision she had to make, she hardly noticed.
The station was small and not well used. It had been built to serve the needs of the workmen in the quarry and wood yard, both of which were now closed. The station remained open mainly for the summer visitors although their numbers had fallen, first with the wartime barriers blocking off access to many parts of the beach, then with the growing popularity of holidays abroad for people able to afford the luxury of guaranteed sunshine. Rosita was the only one offering a ticket to the station master who stood as if expecting a rush: uniform neat, shoes as shiny as any soldier’s and his ticket machine at the ready.
The train came from Cardiff, puffing and snorting, sending clouds of smoke and sooty specks up into the blue sky, dwarfing the solitary passenger waiting for the monster to stop and allow her to step into the brown and yellow carriage. She found a seat near a window, glad of the escape from the blazing sun and from her thoughts that were getting her nowhere.
She didn’t notice a passenger alight and walk off down the approach towards the beach. His small steel-framed spectacles gave him a foreign appearance, although he was Welsh. His beard was long but so thin his narrow face was hardly hidden by its dirty yellow and grey veil. Heads in the carriage turned to watch him pass. The station master nodded and greeted him.
‘Evening, sir. Lovely evening.’
‘For some, station master, for some,’ Luke replied.
Luke had just returned from France, where he had spent a week in a forlorn attempt to find Martine. Since his hasty departure in 1940 he had lost touch with her. He had been back many times and searched the area and the records offices for news of her but she had vanished.
Their café was a ruin, the farm where Martine had lived with her father gone completely under a new housing development. Blocks of flats had grown where there had once been fields, woods and wild flowers. No one knew the whereabouts of Martine, although many remembered the café and the music and the laughter they had shared.
Entering the cottage that afternoon, his senses told him someone had been there recently. The perfume in the air was expensive and he wondered for a moment if his sister had come to investigate the fate of the family’s holiday cottage. But no. Why should she come? The place was his now, bought on his behalf by Jeanie, so the family didn’t know he was the owner. He reflected with renewed sadness that the deception had been necessary. His sister would have refused to sell if she had known her pariah of a brother was the purchaser. Hatred hadn’t ended with his father’s life.
He had wondered how to spend his few hours off. The shops in Cardiff hadn’t appealed, and he couldn’t have stayed in his stuffy flat. Now he was here he thought about fishing, but was too lethargic. It would be deliciously cool on the water but hot work rowing out to a suitable place. He picked up a book and read for a while then walked on the beach, then slept.
As he sat in the chair recently vacated by Rosita, he thought about his life. He was getting old. It was really time to do something about finding Rosita if he was ever to do so. But where could he start? She could be hundreds of miles away. He had made several abortive attempts but the trail had gone cold. He was horrified to realize how many years had passed since he had last tried to find her. His only memory of her was that sad little girl bruised from beatings at Graham’s farm.
The evening with Richard did not go well. Rationing was still making meals difficult to plan and Rosita began to wish she had suggested they ate out rather than have to use all her week’s meat ration to make a spaghetti bolognaise. She and Miss Grainger forfeited their sweet ration to buy chocolate and scrounged some eggs for which they paid sixpence halfpenny each, and Miss Grainger made them a rich, creamy mousse.
The meal was successful and as they ate they talked, mostly about their childhood. Richard decided to tell her the truth and when they sat with a pot of coffee in front of them, he said, ‘If you don’t sell me the shop I will be broke within a few weeks.’ If he expected immediate capitulation he was disappointed. For a moment they stared at each other, both trying to show their position, Richard pleading, hoping for her sympathy, Rosita cool and determined. Richard decided to explain the situation fully.
‘I came out of the army in 1946 with £300,’ he told her. ‘I bought an old wreck of a cottage with a large garden and knocked it down and built two houses on the plot. With a bricklayer who became my business partner, I borrowed money, delayed paying bills, cut costs how and wherever I could, and finally sold and made a reasonable profit.
‘My partner Monty and I survived on as little as was humanly possible for years. We lived in a shed, surviving on fish and chips, apples and beer, and we used every penny we made to buy more land, and we built two larger houses. After that, still living rough, in a caravan by this time, we built a row of five houses, and made enough to get into reasonably sized contracts.
‘But instead of acting cautiously and looking for more land, I persuaded Monty to take a big risk. We ploughed all our money into the houses around … my shop.’ He glanced at her as he emphasized the penultimate word. ‘I had plans drawn up for a block of flats, the council have given me the go-ahead, and I come home to find my shop, the kingpin of all our hopes, has been sold in my absence by my father.’
‘Your shop? Come off it, Richard! The deeds and everything else were in your father’s name. It was his to sell, so why should I feel guilty?’
‘I don’t want you to feel guilty, you did nothing wrong. But we were almost family, you and I. Come on, love, you can’t really believe you can get away with such a shabby trick, not now you know? Look, I’ll see a solicitor tomorrow and get this unfortunate muddle sorted out.’ He didn’t see her expression change as he went on, ‘Just leave it to me – you don’t want to worry your pretty little head about this. This is man’s work sorting out solicitors and accountants. Relax and leave it all to me.’
It was the worst approach he could have made.
His condescending attitude made Rosita’s moments of guilt fade like a sea fret in the sun. Stiffening her back and moving away from him, she said frostily, ‘I have no intention of selling my shop, Richard. To you, or anyone else.’
‘Be sensible. You can’t do this to me, Rosita. You can’t.’
‘Watch me!’
She had been prepared to come to some agreement in which they could both have benefited. The new stock she had bought could have been sold at her other shop and there were properties she could have bought. If it had meant waiting until Richard was able to free the money to pay her, she, with Miss Grainger’s approval, would have accepted that. But when he tried to almost bully her with a smile, treating her like some downtrodden, foolish female, she had cancelled all inclination to find a compromise.
‘I’m damned if I’ll do what you ask,’ she said, standing up and picking up their coffee cups, tacitly asking him to leave. ‘I am a businesswoman not some poor, quaking little woman afraid to disagree with a tall, handsome male!’
He risked a grin. ‘So you think I’m handsome, then?’ He stepped towards her, an attempt to put his arms around her apparent in th
e gesture. She stepped backwards and away from the enticing invitation.
‘Nowhere handsome enough!’ she snapped. ‘And as a business move, a smile and a hug for the little woman doesn’t stand a chance of changing my mind! Several have tried that approach before you and got nowhere. Now will you go before I pour the rest of this coffee over your disgusting suit.’
Richard left the house and hurried down the street. From a phone box he spoke to his partner Monty, who was still in London, and explained in brief the problems they faced. ‘Can you come down when you’ve sewn up all the ends there?’ Richard pleaded. ‘I know you were going to have a holiday, but I don’t know how to get around this hurdle.’
Monty agreed and Richard felt easier. Between them they would persuade Rosita to capitulate and let them get on with their plans to build the smart new flats. She would give in, in the end. Unless he and Monty were to be bankrupt, she had to agree.
Monty was a widower with two growing sons. He had willingly invested money he raised by selling his house in Richard’s business ventures. He had already decided to leave his sons with the aunt who had reared them while he had been in the army, before Richard had made the suggestion of a partnership. The boys were settled in their life and, at seventeen and fourteen, thought of him more of a kindly uncle than a father.
Of the two men, Richard was the one with the real business flare and daring, Monty the equally important small, calm voice. Richard knew that if he failed in this, their largest undertaking, his worst sadness would be for the losses suffered by his loyal friend and partner.
It was not yet ten o’clock, perhaps time to see his brother Idris and get that unpleasant task out of the way. The day had been a bad one from the start, so he might as well end it on the same note!
He had the address of the terraced house on Walpole Street but as he went towards it he decided to sit and cool down before reviving his acquaintance with his brother. The meeting with Rosita had left him tense and not a little angry.
Gull Island Page 23
