‘How is she?’
‘Fair to middling. I’ll call you once dinner is ready, we’ll have it in the kitchen, shall we? It’s cosier in there tonight.’
‘Fine, lass. Whatever suits you is all right by me.’
Yes, she was lucky all right. Rosie stood, bending and kissing the top of Zachariah’s fair head before she left the room.
Mr Thomas called three times in the following few days to speak to his daughter, and each time Flora refused to receive him. She had followed through on her threat to take the matter of her mother’s death further, and had gone to the police station and made a statement in which she accused her father of consistent unprovoked violence over a period of some fifteen to sixteen years, and also of attacking her mother on the night of her death with a view to doing her serious injury.
Following Mr Thomas’s third visit to the house Flora had verged on the hysterical; the strain of her grief and impotent rage and bitterness had boiled up as she had watched from an upstairs window while her father had argued with Zachariah on the doorstep. After that, Rosie made up her mind to go and see Mr Thomas. She would ask him to stop pestering his daughter and allow her some peace until the court case, which would now be inevitable due to Flora’s allegations. She didn’t tell Zachariah of her intentions, knowing he would disapprove; neither did she mention the matter to Flora who was still struggling to get through each day minute by minute, but she really feared for her friend’s state of mind if the visits were allowed to continue. Flora’s heartache at her mother’s passing was bad enough, but the gnawing resentment and fury she felt at her father’s refusal to admit to the true facts was eating her up.
On leaving the house the following morning with the excuse that she wanted to spend her Christmas club from the Co-op, Rosie went to Mr Thomas’s place of work, the Castle Street Brewery in Bishopswearmouth. On reaching High Street West she stood a while debating what she was going to say. The brewery, founded more than half a century before by the Vaux family, was a large and successful concern covering an area of some two acres with an extensive frontage to Castle Street, and Rosie knew Mr Thomas held a prestigious post in the business. She also knew he would not appreciate her visit. But . . . nothing ventured, nothing gained.
She took a deep breath and entered the grounds, walking past the rows and rows of large barrels that stretched as far as she could see, past the stables which housed the dray horses, looking for someone to direct her to the offices. She had no intention of wandering about in the brewery itself, which was vast with its spacious barley stores, kilning rooms, fermenting rooms and other departments. When she saw Mr Thomas she wanted to be cool and controlled, not hot and flustered. He had never liked her, and he was going to like her less after this visit.
The snow which had fallen the night before was inches thick outside the confines of the brewery, but Rosie saw that an army of workers must have been at it first thing because the cobbled grounds were swept clean, and a sense of order prevailed. It was an intimidating establishment and somehow set apart from the struggling world beyond its perimeters; she could see how Mr Thomas would revel in his authority in such an imposing and well-run business.
After a stable lad had pointed the way to Mr Thomas’s office - a route which required her to retrace her footsteps - Rosie was just about to enter the building when the man himself came out of a door just in front of her.
‘Mr Thomas?’ Rosie’s voice was high. There was a moment’s silence and then he turned and she knew immediately he had recognized her voice. ‘I . . . I need to talk to you.’ No, this wouldn’t do, she couldn’t hesitate or stammer with this man. ‘It’s important.’
‘It would have to be to bring you here.’ Strangely there was none of the antagonism or rage she had expected, his whole manner was quiet, even subdued, and Rosie stared at him uncertainly for a moment or two more before Mr Thomas said, ‘I was just leaving. Do you want to walk along with me?’
Rosie swallowed hard and then she spoke just as quietly saying, ‘Yes, all right, thank you.’ He had taken her aback. None of this was going at all as she had envisaged, and Mr Thomas himself bore no resemblance to the strutting, upright, cold individual she had always known.
When they stepped into High Street West it was beginning to snow again, small whirling flakes blowing haphazardly in the bitingly cold wind, and although it was only just gone nine o’clock in the morning the street was already bustling with Christmas shoppers. They walked in silence for some minutes. Rosie just didn’t know how to start and Mr Thomas seemed immersed in thoughts of his own, but as they reached Blackett’s, at the junction of Union Street and High Street, Mr Thomas turned to her and said, ‘Beck’s café is open and it’s clean and warm. Shall we have our discussion over a pot of tea?’
Once seated at a small table for two near the window Mr Thomas ordered a pot of tea and toasted teacakes, and Rosie found a feeling of unreality had gripped her. If anyone had told her twenty-four hours before that she would be sitting with Flora’s da having tea and buns she would have laughed in their face. She came down to earth with a bump as Mr Thomas turned to her and said, his voice holding a note she remembered from the past, ‘Well? I presume you are here in the guise of Flora’s envoy? You know she has filed a libellous report to the police in which she accuses me of virtually killing my wife?’
‘Flora doesn’t know I’ve come to see you.’ Funnily enough Rosie found that Mr Thomas’s return to supercilious mode had the effect of putting steel in her backbone. ‘And you might as well know that my husband and I are behind her every inch of the way and support her decision wholeheartedly.’
He stared at her for a moment and then said, ‘My employers were informed of Flora’s accusations yesterday evening. I have been told this morning to take some weeks’ “holiday” until the matter is settled, but what they mean is I am finished there. Will that satisfy my daughter’s lust for blood, do you think, or is she determined to force us both to suffer the ignominy of a court appearance? ’
‘Is that the only thing that concerns you?’ She couldn’t believe this man. ‘When Flora’s mother--’ Rosie stopped abruptly as a frilly-aproned waitress bustled up with the requisite tray holding a silver-plated tea set and a two-tiered cakestand with the teacakes at the bottom and small pots of preserves on the top, which she proceeded to place on their table with great ceremony.
‘Of course I’m upset about Flora’s mother.’ Once the waitress disappeared Rosie looked up to find Mr Thomas’s eyes tight on her. ‘You think I don’t care, is that it? I loved my wife, Mrs Price.’
Rosie was surprised that he gave her her title - she hadn’t even known he knew her married name - but her voice was cool when she said, ‘I’m sorry, but I find that hard to believe.’
He seemed about to fire back some retort but then he leant back in his seat, the breath leaving his body in a long drawn-out sigh. After a long pause he raised his eyes again and said, ‘All the men in my family have been fighting men as far back as I can recall, army, all of them, they loved it. I used to think it was the military life they liked, the order and discipline, but I’m not so sure now. Do you think weaknesses, flaws, can be passed down from generation to generation?’
‘What?’ And then as she collected herself, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand what you are getting at.’
‘I lived in terror of my father, Mrs Price, we all did, my mother included. We boys, my brothers and I, used to be in fear and trepidation when we knew he was coming home on leave, and we knew we’d be black and blue at the end of it. My mother’ - he paused a moment - ‘he would think nothing of striking her in front of us all. Maintaining standards, he called it. He was a violent man; my grandfather was violent, my brothers too, but until I got married I thought . . .’ Again he shook his head. ‘I thought I was different to them.’
‘Are you saying . . .’ Rosie paused, her tea untouched. ‘Are you telling me you couldn’t help hitting Flora and her mother? That it was y
our father’s fault?’
‘You don’t think that is possible?’
‘No, I don’t.’ Rosie tried very hard to keep her voice low but it was trembling with indignation. ‘I can accept that an upbringing like the one you’ve described would bring its own set of problems, but I’ve known people - Sally’s Mick for one, the girl I worked with, her husband - who were regularly knocked about and are as gentle as lambs. Even if you felt like hitting Flora you needn’t have, but you didn’t try to fight it, not really. You bullied Flora from when she was a small child and you know it, Mr Thomas.’
‘And Flora intends to follow through and declare such things in court?’
‘Yes. Yes indeed she does, Mr Thomas.’
As Rosie watched his eyes wander past her to the scene outside the window it came to her that Mr Thomas had been sounding her out, finding out exactly how the land lay. He was a cold fish; he was a very cold fish, she thought as a little shiver flickered down her spine. It was almost as if he didn’t have a conscience at all. A man like Mick’s father was one thing - she had met the big brute of an Irishman who was all mouth and trousers with a wicked temper - but he was a different kettle of fish to Flora’s father and she knew which she preferred. Mick had told Sally he had heard his da cry and beg his mam for forgiveness when he had sobered up after a drunken violent bout, but apart from the fact that Mr Thomas didn’t drink to become brutal, she couldn’t imagine him ever asking anyone for forgiveness. His violence was a tool to control the mind as much as anything else, and he was trying to manipulate her now with this softly-softly approach.
As the thought hit, everything in Rosie rebelled and she said, ‘Leave Flora alone, Mr Thomas. She won’t see you, she’s determined on that, and my husband and I don’t want you calling at the house again.’
Mr Thomas’s eyes returned to her face. ‘I won’t allow her to drag my good name through the gutter. Tell her that, would you?’ His voice was still soft and low, but there was a quality to it that made Rosie’s stomach muscles tighten. ‘And my wife did attack me, Mrs Price. In that respect, at least, I am an innocent man. Tell Flora that, make her understand.’ His voice was insistent. ‘She is wronging me with this court action.’
‘She’s wronging you?’
‘Yes. She’s ruining everything I’ve worked for, everything I hold dear.’
‘You killed her mother.’ And then, as he went to speak, Rosie bent forward as she half rose in her seat, and her voice was a quiet hiss. ‘I don’t care whether Flora’s mam went for you or not, that’s almost immaterial. The fact remains, you killed her nonetheless. But you aren’t going to spoil Flora’s life, Mr Thomas. She’s free of you now and she intends to stay free.’
His eyes had narrowed with the attack but he didn’t react at all beyond saying again, ‘Promise me you will tell Flora what I’ve said. I won’t let her soil our name and I am innocent. I want her to know that. Tell her I’ve lost my job because of her, and that I’m being called before the church committee next week because of these allegations. Tell her.’
‘It won’t do any good.’
‘But you’ll tell her?’
‘Yes.’ Rosie had absolutely no intention of telling Flora.
‘Today?’
‘Yes.’ Rosie straightened. She had to get out of here. In the last few minutes, it wasn’t too extreme to say, she had been feeling as though she were in the presence of something evil.
‘Good.’ He relaxed back in his seat, his eyes still on her face as she stood looking down at him. ‘That is all I ask, Mrs Price. In that case I won’t call on Flora today as I had planned to do.’
Rosie didn’t answer him as she gathered up her bag and gloves, nor did she look at him again as she made her way from the table and out into the street. She walked steadily along the pavement until she turned into Walworth Way, which linked Union Street with Crowtree Road, and here she leant against the brick wall on the corner under a large sign stating that Crowther and Co. in High Street West specialized in artificial teeth, with a graphic picture which illustrated the fact in glorious colour, and took several pulls of the icy air deep into her lungs. Had she done the right thing? The snow was coming down in thick white flakes now and the sky looked laden with it. At least she had spared Flora the trauma of another visit if nothing else. And if he had been going to accuse her in that way it wouldn’t have done Flora any good.
She took one last deep breath and straightened. She had to go home armed with packages if her story of Christmas shopping was to be believed, so she’d better get cracking. With it being Christmas Eve tomorrow the shops would be packed to bursting all day even if a good deal of the purchases would be courtesy of help from the pawn shops, and half of Sunderland would still be in debt come Easter.
Rosie didn’t mention her meeting with Mr Thomas to anyone other than Zachariah, and when she told her husband what had transpired she made it clear she didn’t want Flora to know the meeting had taken place. She was doubly glad of the sixth sense that led her to that decision at nine o’clock on Christmas Eve when, in spite of the drifts which were now waist-high in some parts, there was a knock at the front door.
‘Not more carol singers? I didn’t hear anythin’, did you?’ Zachariah frowned enquiringly at the two women as he stood up. They had had ‘God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen’ at five o’clock and ‘Hark the Herald Angels’ followed by ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ at six, but since then the blizzard conditions had served to keep even the most intrepid carol singers indoors.
‘Miss Flora Thomas?’
The constable resembled a walking snowman, his helmet a giant white busby, and as Zachariah followed him into the sitting room he shrugged his shoulders at the two women, indicating the policeman hadn’t been forthcoming as to the reason for his nocturnal call.
Flora’s hand had gone to her mouth and she merely bobbed her head in reply, and as Rosie moved to her side Flora’s free hand gripped Rosie’s and thus they faced the constable together.
This was to do with that man, it was, and he had contrived it to happen on this special night. Even before the policeman started talking Rosie sensed something of what was to come. It appeared Mr Thomas had arranged for a friend in the choir to collect him at five o’clock for the carol service at the chapel. The friend had arrived to find the door slightly ajar, and on entering he had discovered Mr Thomas in his favourite armchair in front of the sitting-room fire, the evening paper folded neatly at his side and a picture of Flora and her mother in his hands. He was quite dead, having consumed the contents of a bottle of sleeping draught which had been prescribed, so the constable informed them, to help combat his grief at his wife’s passing. The short note was very simple, ‘Let the guilt rest where it should.’ There was no signature.
‘Let the guilt rest where it should.’ Rosie’s eyes met her husband’s, and they were both thinking the same thing.
Mr Thomas had planned that the full weight of his suicide should fall on the shoulders of his daughter. If Rosie had repeated anything of what Flora’s father had said to her, the accusations against Flora and his holding her to blame for what he saw as his public undoing, this note would have had a very different connotation. He had wanted Flora to carry the burden for the rest of her life. Oh, Flora might have known it was unfair and untrue, that this master manipulator and cold tyrant had orchestrated his death for maximum effect in an effort to control her even from the grave, but some tiny seed of guilt would always have been waiting to root itself in the fertile regions of Flora’s persona. He was a monster.
‘“Let the guilt rest where it should.”’ Flora had fallen against Rosie as the constable had finished speaking, her hands pressed into her stomach beneath her breasts as Rosie’s arms held her tight. ‘He had to die before he could admit he was wrong, Rosie. What was the matter with him?’
They would never know, and Rosie for one was unutterably thankful that now they did not have to try to find out.
Chapter Seventeen
Christmas was over and it was New Year’s Eve, and Rosie was regretting the open-handed invitations she had ladled out to all and sundry at the end of November for this night. She had been feeling vulnerable and a bit low at the time - the weeks of morning sickness had drained her spirit and the situation with Flora had been nagging at the back of her mind - and she had thought a party would be just the thing to start the New Year aright, but now she wasn’t so sure. Flora was staying with them still, for one thing, and on the third occasion that Peter had called after Christmas she had felt obliged to ask him to join the jollifications. And then Davey had called the day after Boxing Day with little presents for them all, and somehow the conversation had got round to New Year’s Eve, and another invitation had been issued . . .
All in all there would be fourteen besides herself and Zachariah. Flora, Peter and Davey - if Davey came, that was, he hadn’t seemed too sure at Christmas - along with her mother and Hannah and Joseph Green. Sally and Mick were coming, and Beryl from the Co-op and her young man. Annie McLinnie and Arthur - Rosie would have invited the lads too, she hadn’t forgotten their kindness when Molly had disappeared the first time, but with Shane McLinnie at home that had proved impossible - and lastly Tommy Bailey and his lady friend.
She had wondered if Flora would prefer a quiet New Year’s Eve, the circumstances being as they were, but it had been her friend who had insisted the party go ahead. ‘I can’t hide myself away, I’ve got to face folk sometime so I might as well start now,’ Flora had said when Rosie had voiced her misgivings a few days before. Rosie agreed wholeheartedly with the overall sentiment, she just felt a party, with all the chit-chat and social niceties it entailed, could be a little much at this early date, but she had been happy to leave the decision to Flora.
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