Reach for Tomorrow

by Rita Bradshaw

  Rosie had actually opened her mouth to speak to the slim, very well-dressed young woman standing on the doorstep clad snugly in furs and matching muff, when she felt the blood rush to her head so fast it made her dizzy. ‘Molly?’

  ‘Hallo, Rosie.’

  ‘Molly! Oh, come in, come in.’ Rosie reached out and drew her sister over the threshold, and then, as she looked into the beautiful face framed by mink, she said again, ‘Molly, oh, Molly,’ before hugging her tight. There was one moment of stiffness and then Molly was hugging her back just as tightly and both women were laughing and crying as they stood swaying together.

  And then a small voice brought them apart as it said, ‘Mammy?’

  ‘You had a little boy?’ Molly’s voice was very soft as she glanced down into the solemn little face surveying her with Zachariah’s deep blue eyes.

  ‘You didn’t know?’ Rosie was looking at Molly, and now the first rush of emotion was gone she found it difficult to link the composed young woman in front of her with the Molly she had known. A transition had taken place, and if she hadn’t known Molly’s circumstances she would have said it was for the better. Her sister’s voice was different, clearer and well modulated and the broad Tyneside accent had mellowed into a warm burr, and her carriage was straight and dignified, her manner self-assured and controlled. In fact she was, to all intents and purposes, very much a lady.

  ‘I knew you were expecting a baby; Bridget told me when she came to see me a few weeks after you’d gone to the house,’ Molly said quietly, still with her eyes on her nephew. ‘But I didn’t try to find out . . . He’s beautiful, Rosie, and so like Zachariah. That must be some comfort to you.’

  ‘You know about Zachariah?’

  ‘That’s why I’ve come.’ And now Molly turned back to her as Erik, suddenly bored with the proceedings, ran back to the sitting room. ‘I have only just heard, Rosie. We . . . we’ve been away, Gerald and I, in Europe. He took me on a tour, it’s been wonderful, but we’ve been out of the country for over eighteen months.’ And then the poise slipped a little as Molly added, her voice soft, ‘Oh, Rosie, I’m sorry I didn’t come before when you gave Bridget the address, but I thought it best. I . . . I’d made up my mind it had to be a clean break for me to manage. But this with Zachariah, this is different. I’m so sorry at his passing, Rosie, heart sorry, and you with the bairn and all.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Rosie’s voice was distracted and she was thinking, Europe? She said Europe. Did that mean this man, whoever he was, had married her?

  And then Rosie’s hopes were quashed as Molly, reading her sister’s face, said, ‘He’s a good man, Gerald, and he treats me very well, but he has always made it quite clear that when he takes a wife she will be from his class with all the right connections. But as his mistress I have my own house and car, and we entertain frequently. He . . . he doesn’t hide me away, they don’t think like that, Rosie. It’s quite acceptable for a man in his position to have a mistress and I’m treated with respect by his friends.’

  Rosie was at a loss to know what to say.

  ‘I’ve landed on my feet, and knowing what I know now it could have been mighty different.’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘Love him?’ Molly stared at her and for a moment Rosie felt very very young as she looked back into her sister’s exquisite face with its wide sea-green eyes, but Molly’s voice was gentle when she said, ‘Gerald is twenty-five years older than me and a man of large appetites. What he loses at cards in one sitting would keep a family round here for a year, and I don’t think he has ever bothered to find out just what he’s worth. He regards his mistress in the same way he does his favourite horse, as a valuable possession, no more. But he is kind and generous, and through him, whatever happens now, my future is secure. When he tires of me, and sooner or later he will tire of me, I know that, I shall go abroad to live. France, or Italy. Their culture is quite unlike ours and so free, Rosie. The last eighteen months have been a revelation.’

  She had changed and she was living in a different world. They stared at each other for a long moment, Molly nipping at her lip, and then their worlds were bridged as Rosie said, her eyes full of love, ‘I’m so glad you came, Molly. You can stay for a while?’

  ‘If you’re sure you want me to.’

  ‘You’re my baby sister and I love you, you don’t have to ask.’

  Molly stayed for over two hours and once Erik had overcome his brief shyness with the beautiful lady with the furry coat, he was clambering onto his aunty’s lap and putting his chubby little cheeks next to her smooth, scented ones as he hugged her tight and chatted away. Molly hugged him several times as though she would never let him go, and after he had gone to sleep on her lap she asked about her mother and Hannah, but expressed no desire to see them and Rosie didn’t press her.

  It was when she was leaving that the years really rolled away. She knelt in the hall, taking Erik in her arms again as she said, ‘This will be the last time I’ll come, Rosie. It’s not fair. But mention me to him sometimes.’ She kissed the silky blond curls. ‘You can say I died, I don’t mind, but don’t not mention me.’

  Oh, Molly, Molly. Rosie’s heart was full and now she knelt too and the three of them were close as she said, ‘I’ll tell him about you often and that you held him in your arms, Molly, but my door is always open to you. Remember that. Wherever I am, whoever I’m with, there’s always a place for you too.’

  ‘Oh, Rosie.’ Molly smiled at her through her tears. ‘You’ve never given up on me, have you?’

  ‘No, and I never will.’

  ‘I had to follow my own star, and do what I needed to do. For right or wrong I did what my heart told me. Tell Mam that when you talk to her, try and make her understand.’

  For right or wrong. They were born of the same parents, they had suckled at the same breasts and there was a wealth of shared memories between them, but it all came down to what they saw as right and wrong and it was so different. Rosie couldn’t speak, but as they rose to their feet she cupped her sister’s lovely face in her hands and kissed her.

  And it was later, much later, when Erik was tucked up in bed and fast asleep and the night wind was howling down the chimney, that Rosie thought again of Molly’s last words. ‘I had to follow my own star and do what I needed to do. For right or wrong I did what my heart told me.’ Maybe she and Molly weren’t so far apart after all.

  Jessie took the news of Molly’s visit very well; she cried a little, but seemed reconciled to the fact that Molly had chosen the life she wanted and was gone for good. Rosie spent some time talking to Hannah and putting Molly in the best light she could as she explained how things were, and by the time she left her youngest sister she was satisfied Hannah both understood and accepted the situation and, whilst not approving of Molly’s lifestyle, still loved her sister. It was the best Rosie could have hoped for.

  As the weeks went on Rosie made no attempt to see Davey, neither did she divulge to anyone the plans she had set in operation after her visit to Ireland.

  February and March saw the whole of England swept by ferocious blizzards which often took the temperature to nine or ten degrees below zero, and April was bitterly cold with icy rain and sleet and snow. Rosie was probably the only person in the whole of Sunderland who welcomed the atrocious weather, but the dreadful conditions meant Davey wasn’t likely to change his mind about leaving at the beginning of May and go any earlier. And so she continued to make her plans for the inevitable day when the sun would shine and spring would herald Davey’s departure from Sunderland and her.

  Then, in the first week of May, spring came with a vengeance, all the more determined for being kept at bay so long. Overnight, it seemed, the yards and back lanes were alive with zealous housewives beating the long winter out of threadbare squares of carpet and clippy mats and flock mattresses, washing curtains and bed linen and clothes, and in some cases - certainly in the tenement slums of the East End - children were bei
ng unpicked from their winter underwear that had been sewn on sometime in November, and their encrusted skin introduced to water and air for the first time in months. Pavements were bleached, doorsteps scrubbed and whitened, floorboards scoured and windows washed. For a few days all was a positive hive of activity.

  Whether it was the sap rising that gave Peter the courage to ask Flora to marry him was anybody’s guess, but the first weekend in May saw Flora sporting an exquisite diamond-and-ruby engagement ring and talking about a summer wedding.

  Rosie had chosen her words very carefully when Flora had come to see her, without Peter, and show her the ring. ‘Oh, I’m pleased for you both, I am, really, but . . . but you are sure?’ She took Flora’s hands in her own, shaking them slightly as she spoke.

  ‘Do you know, I am.’ There was something akin to a note of surprise in Flora’s voice. ‘I thought he would ask me soon, and I kept changing my mind every two minutes as to what I’d say. But--’ She broke off abruptly, pulling her hands free and walking across to little Erik, who was banging away on an old saucepan with a wooden spoon despite the toys scattered about him, and, after picking the child up and holding him close for a moment, continued. ‘He asked me so nervously, Rosie, but he went down on one knee and everything. He said I was the only woman he had ever loved, ever would love, and if I said no he would keep on loving me till the day he died. He said I was beautiful and - oh, lots of things. Nice things.’ She gave a little embarrassed smile and shook her head, placing Erik down and giving him the wooden spoon again. And then she turned, looking straight at Rosie as she added, ‘It was everything that Davey didn’t say.’

  ‘Oh, Flora.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. Really. I’d have gone round the bend trying to be someone I’m not just to please him. It’s funny you know, but I’ve always been able to say anything to Peter, anything at all, and yet with Davey I was forever picking me words and biting me tongue and that’s not natural, is it.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘Not for me anyway.’ And now Flora grinned her old cheeky grin before she said, ‘I told Peter’s mam where she could stick her idea of us living with them after we were married, she’d got it all planned to the last tiny detail, and Peter didn’t turn a hair.’

  ‘Flora, you didn’t!’ Peter’s mother was a formidable lady.

  ‘He agreed with me. And when his mam started ranting and raving like she does, he stood up and said very coolly’ - and now Flora gave a perfect impersonation of her intended’s quiet, slightly upper-class voice - ‘“Mother, please conduct yourself with some propriety in front of my future wife.” Honestly, Rosie, I thought she was going to swallow her tonsils!’

  No, Flora could certainly never have survived a marriage where she had to choose her words, Rosie thought, as the two girls gave way to helpless laughter. She could have been Sally’s twin in that regard.

  The day following Flora’s call was a Sunday, and at three o’clock in the afternoon when Rosie answered a knock at her front door and found Davey on the doorstep, she knew her intuition had been right. She had felt he would come this weekend, it was one of the reasons she had agreed that her mother should have Erik for the day when Jessie had suggested it after Rosie had declined an invitation for Sunday lunch herself.

  ‘Hallo, Rosie.’ Davey inclined his head towards her and it took all her considerable willpower not to betray the shock that had coursed through her at the sight of him. He looked ill. No, not ill exactly, more tired, exhausted.

  ‘Won’t you come in?’

  Won’t you come in. Just like that. Here he’d been, suffering the torments of the damned for weeks, and she was as cool as a cucumber. By, women were a different species all right. He had always known it, but never so clearly as in this moment. And she must know why he had come to see her. As Davey followed the demurely dressed figure into the sitting room his thoughts were racing. Didn’t she care that he was leaving? If she did there was no sign of it.

  ‘Please sit down.’

  ‘I’d rather not.’ He couldn’t match her cool composure and his voice was rough.

  ‘As you please.’

  He couldn’t take much more of this. He had worked himself up all week for this meeting and it wasn’t going at all as he had expected. Not that he had known what to expect, to be fair, but whatever it’d been, it wasn’t this . . . this ice-maiden.

  ‘It’s good news about Flora and Peter, isn’t it?’

  Flora and Peter? For a moment the names barely registered and then he nodded quickly, his voice curt as he said, ‘Aye, yes. He’s a good man and he’s got his head on straight. He’ll look after the lass.’

  Now the time was here, the time she had prepared for for weeks, Rosie found her hands were trembling and she put them behind her back as she said, ‘Can I offer you a drink? A cup of tea?’

  Davey had never been a patient man and Rosie was aware of this, and she knew the effort it took for him to say, and with some civility, ‘No, nothing thank you. Look, I’ve come--’

  ‘I know why you have come.’

  ‘Oh.’ She had taken him aback, both by her cool tone and the manner in which she was looking at him. He couldn’t work her out and that was an understatement, he told himself bitterly, but the sooner he was away from here the better.

  ‘But before we go into that,’ she flapped her hand as though his leaving was of no importance, ‘there is something I want to ask you. A favour, I suppose you could call it.’

  ‘Aye?’ His back was very straight now and his face grim, but Rosie told herself she couldn’t weaken. Not now. She had to do it all as she had planned. She had thought about this for a long time and she knew the success or failure of her plan was blowing in the wind.

  ‘I want you to take a drive with me.’

  ‘A drive?’ If she had propositioned him to go upstairs and sport in bed he couldn’t have been more astounded.

  ‘Yes, a drive. It’s what civilized people do on a Sunday afternoon if they are fortunate enough to have a car.’

  For a moment she thought she had overplayed her hand as his face tensed and a muscle in his jaw worked, but then he said, ‘Why would you want to go for a drive?’

  ‘I will explain as we go, if that’s all right, but it would help me considerably if you’d come.’

  When he was a child it had been a trick of his, which had driven his poor mother half mad with frustration at times, to shut his eyes and make his face blank if he was being told something he didn’t want to hear. He’d been able to keep it up through any amount of carry on, even when his backside was being walloped, and for a moment the situation he was facing made Davey want to resort to that same childish defence. The last thing he wanted was to go for a ride in her damn motor car! By, did she know what she was doing? Did she have any idea of the way she was rubbing his nose in it?

  ‘Davey?’

  She was looking at him, and now he caught a thread of pleading in her voice at the same time as a fleeting shadow in her eyes, gone in the next moment, told him she wasn’t so sure of herself as she would like him to believe. But it would do neither of them any good to go for a drive, to prolong the agony, Rosie must know that? He had made his arrangements, he had said his goodbyes, and this was the last call before he was on his way, and nothing - and no one - could change that. She had to understand; and he hadn’t hidden behind any subterfuge, now, had he? He’d made himself plain the last time, he knew he had. No, this had to end as if with the cut of the surgeon’s scalpel - quickly, cleanly and without hesitation.

  And then, in repudiation of all he had been thinking, he heard himself say, ‘A short drive, then, if that fits in with your plans. I . . . I’ve things to do.’

  Rosie made an almost imperceptible inclination of her head and again the regal lady was back with the nature of her acquiescence, and it grated like barbed wire on his taut nerves. He was barmy, clean barmy, to go with her, but how could he not? How could he not? The words were a groan from de
ep within where the essence of his love burnt, and he found it hurt to look at her. Her pale creamy skin, the dark eyes with their long silky lashes - she was beauty and warmth and bright tomorrows, and from this day on he knew he would never see her again. He wouldn’t come back, they both knew it. The gulf was too wide; whatever happened in the future it was too wide.

  ‘I’ll just get my coat.’

  In contrast to his feverish thoughts her voice was cool and low, and the need that was upon him to touch her, to feel her skin beneath his fingers even if it was just the side of her face or the palm of her hand, kept his hands clenched in his pockets and his voice gruff as he said, ‘Aye, all right.’

  She must think him a loutish brute. The thought did nothing to take the frown from his face. And perhaps he was; certainly compared to Zachariah he was. Flora had told him how Rosie’s husband had educated her, broadening her mind and her vision and giving her an understanding of the classics and the arts. What did he know about such things? Nowt. Double nowt. How could he imagine she would ever have considered spending the rest of her life with a man like him anyway? It wasn’t until that second that he realized how jealous, how bitterly jealous he was of a dead man, and the knowledge caused him to grind his teeth before walking out into the hall where Rosie was pulling on her gloves.

  ‘Shall we go?’ She turned to smile brightly at him and for a moment he could have hit her. She made him feel like a worm, a nothing. She needed him so little and he needed her so much. And he knew now - the last grindingly slow weeks of misery and longing providing all the confirmation he could have asked for - that if things had been different, if she had been the old Rosie living in Forcer Road, he would have worked down the mine for the rest of his life if he had her to come home to in the evenings. Aye, he would. And counted himself fortunate.

  There had been times in the last weeks when he had questioned himself, agonizing over whether he was doing the right thing. The right thing! He laughed inwardly, harsh, bitter laughter. But all his deliberations, his searching to find an answer to the unanswerable, had brought him back to one inescapable conclusion. If he had asked her to marry him he would have become nothing more than a lackey. She had this house, money in the bank - she was as well set-up as any of the toffs in Ryhope Road or Barnes Park. Zachariah had made sure she would want for nothing till the day she died. And what would he have said when the bairn got older and asked him what he did for a living? No, it was impossible. He couldn’t stay with her and she couldn’t go with him. End of story.