Stratford Jewel

by Oliver, Marina

  When Adam was the only guest left Jack, without a word, took his hat and went out. Winnie collapsed into her kitchen chair and began to sob unrestrainedly.

  'Winnie, please go and rest,' Rosa begged. 'You must be so tired. Adam will help me clear up.'

  'I'm sorry, pet. I can't stay on my feet a minute longer. My corns are playing up the very devil. Just put the food in the pantry and stack the plates. I'll do them later.'

  She went wearily up to her room. When the remains of the food had been cleared away Adam poured two glasses of wine and led Rosa into the parlour.

  'Sit down, take a rest yourself. Or would you prefer to go to bed too?'

  Rosa shook her head as she sat on the sofa. 'I couldn't sleep,' she sighed. 'Oh, Adam, what shall I do? I want to try and find Celia, but I don't know where to start.'

  Adam sat beside her and took her hand in his. He stroked it gently. 'Finding her won't change anything. Forget her, my love. Think of yourself now. What are you going to do?'

  'Me? I don't know. Jack will need help in the office. He's never done that, but occasionally I helped Father.' She suppressed a sob. 'Do you think he suffered much?'

  'The punt hit him on the head. He was unconscious before he drowned. He wouldn't have known what was happening,' Adam said firmly. He gathered her into his arms as she began to shake, then bent to kiss the tears away from her cheeks. Rosa gasped, turned her face so that he could kiss her lips, then with a sudden fierce strength she clung to him.

  'Adam, I've been so lonely!'

  'You're not alone now. Never again, Rosa, if I can help it. Oh, my sweet love, this is the wrong place and the wrong time, but I want you more than I've ever wanted anyone before.'

  It was warm and comfortable within his embrace. Rosa had hardly slept for days. She sighed and relaxed, and when Adam's hands became more venturesome she did no more than wriggle in slight embarrassment. It was remarkably soothing to be held tightly, to have Adam whispering comforting, meaningless words that nonetheless gave solace. Briefly she thought of Max, comparing the sweetness of his kiss with the present comfort Adam was offering, and a fresh wave of desolation swept over her. She had lost her father, as good as lost her sister, could not understand her brother's sullen hostility, and would never again see Max Higham. None of them was there, helping her as Adam was. As Adam's kisses became more urgent she let herself sink into a state where thought was totally suspended, and accepted the caresses which helped banish pain to oblivion.

  *

  With Abe in England, and work on the theatre project, Max was unable to leave New York at Easter. He promised to go home for Independence Day, but before the end of April all their plans had to be changed.

  Max heard when he was called into Reuben's office one morning.

  'Bad news,' Reuben said abruptly, and held out a cable form. Max scanned it swiftly, then stared at Reuben.

  'What happened? How could Abe just die like this?'

  'We'll have to wait for a letter, for details. A heart attack, most likely. Poor fellow. He wasn't much above fifty.'

  'His family?'

  'Divorced, children in college. Two boys. I'll go and see them. You go home and pack and find yourself the next boat to England.'

  'England?'

  'We can't drop out of the theatre competition. You are best placed to take it over, Max, you know it better than any one else, and I want to enter for Abe's sake. If we could win it would seem fitting.'

  Two days later Max was crossing the Atlantic yet again. His emotions were in turmoil. He was sorry about Abe, of course, and would miss the older man's guidance, but it was a wonderful opportunity for him, professionally. Apart from that he didn't know whether he was pleased or afraid to be seeing Rosa again. He couldn't forget her, but he could offer her nothing. He was committed to Jenny. And she had been sharing a bedroom with Adam Thorn. She couldn't be the girl he'd first thought she was.

  He did not enjoy the crossing. He was eager to arrive, but apprehensive about what he would find. He tried to work, but without more details of Abe's overall concept, he could do little to assemble the details he and Reuben had been planning. Fortunately the competition was for the overall design only, not detailed plans. That would come later, and so long as he found and could work from Abe's notes and drawings, he might be able to enter their design in time.

  *

  Rosa slowly hung up the telephone. She was becoming apprehensive about answering it. That was the third complaint this week about something not delivered as promised. All three customers had said it wasn't the first time orders had been late, or for other reasons wrong. They hadn't liked to complain so soon after Mr Greenwood's death, they'd tried to sort it out the next time Jack called, but enough was enough. It was time whoever was running the business got themselves sorted out.

  She checked the lists again in case she had made the mistakes, but they were all in order. Jack had been at fault. She sighed. Her brother was never communicative, influenced perhaps by what he'd been through during the war but she accepted it as part of his nature. Was he suffering more than she'd known from their father's sudden and horrible death? Had he lost his concentration, was he fretting? And was Celia's continued silence also affecting him?

  Jack hadn't wanted her in the office. His first objection was that she'd soon be involved in the Festival and wouldn't have time.

  'I can't take part so soon after Father's death,' Rosa reminded him. 'It wouldn't be fitting.'

  'You'll follow Celia to London.'

  'I haven't even thought of it. And since I am here, with little to do, I might as well help. You don't want to do it.'

  Jack then tried to insist they employed a clerk, since he had no intention of staying cooped up all day long. 'I need to be out in the open,' he stated.

  'We need another driver,' she insisted. 'We have Percy, but he has no idea of how to find new business, and Fred's been so ill he wants to retire. Between them we're losing business. You need to be supervising them.'

  'And if we have another driver that will make you say I needn't go out.'

  Rosa had appealed to Adam. 'What can I do? What would be best? Father never employed anyone in the office. It would take ages for a new man to learn about the business. And I know quite a lot already. Besides, I need something to occupy my mind.'

  'Your father left the business jointly to you and Jack, didn't he?' Adam asked.

  'Yes. I didn't know he'd changed his will. It was to have been left to the three of us, which was unusual, I know, but he thought it only fair. Mother had left us her own money split equally, you see, and he wanted us to share the profits when we – Celia and I – married.'

  'Then you are an equal partner. You have a say in what happens. What you want has equal importance with what Jack wants. You can insist.'

  The ensuing argument that evening, with Jack shouting and making dire threats against Adam for his unwarranted interference had frightened Rosa, but she'd persisted. Jack eventually agreed to go on employing Percy, while Rosa did the office work until she could find someone who could be trained to take over from her, leaving her free to pursue her own ambitions.

  She'd given up all thought of acting in the 1927 Festival, and been too distressed to attend either the week-long Gala which ended with a pageant, part of which recreated the famous one of 1769, or the performances. She had looked forward to seeing Wilfred Walter, who'd made his name at the Old Vic, in his first appearance at Stratford, but not even reports of his magnificent Petruchio stirred her interest.

  Two months later she suffered the inevitable regrets. She had been offered a few small speaking parts in the Festival, and to understudy Bianca. If this had gone well she could have expected more professional engagements to follow, and without her father to object she could have accepted. Now she must postpone her ambitions for a while.

  Instead she'd struggled to master the problems of learning how to run the office, leaving little time for mourning. Jack, sitting behind Mustard a
ll day long, with only the occasional brief contact with his customers, had plenty of time to brood. He'd have to pay more attention, though, or they'd lose business. It was fortunate she was here. She could sort out the problems, and this stimulated her. She liked getting the business running smoothly, as she had with the costumes for the Festival, and she would be preserving the business her father and grandfather had built up. She feared that left to Jack it would decline, and that was unthinkable. It would have been betraying her father. At the moment, though, she had to work out a system to prevent Jack forgetting the orders. Seizing a pencil and a sheet of paper she began jotting down ideas.

  *

  Rosa lay back against the mossy bank and looked sleepily through the branches of the trees overhead. It was one of the few fine days in a very wet summer. The June sun was warm, and their horses grazed contentedly nearby. 'I wonder if the old Forest of Arden was all like this? Before they cleared the trees for pasture land.'

  'The whole of England was forest once,' Adam replied, leaning on one elbow and looking down at her. 'Arden isn't special.'

  'But it's Shakespeare's forest. He knew it as a boy, and surely it must have been wilder three hundred years ago, to give him ideas for his plays.'

  'Such as outlaws and banished dukes hiding in it? Could you imagine yourself dressed in tunic and tights, hiding your delicious feminine curves? Your mother named you aptly, fair Rosalind.' He bent over and kissed her on the lips, and she linked her hands round his neck.

  'I'd enjoy the freedom of looking and behaving like a man,' she confessed. 'I always preferred male parts at school, and fortunately I was taller than most of the other girls. That's the disadvantage of acting with men, except plays where girls are in disguise.'

  'Do you wish you'd lived in Shakespeare's time?'

  She considered the question seriously. 'I don't think so. We've progressed so much with better medical knowledge, motor engines, even the wireless and flying across the Atlantic. And women have more rights.'

  'He lived when a Queen ruled. Elizabeth had greater power than the King does today.'

  'The Queen did, but not ordinary women. We can vote, or we can when we reach the proper age of discretion. Why do they maintain it takes a girl nine years longer than a man to grow up?' she asked indignantly.

  'Protection? By that age most women are married and their husbands will guide them.'

  Rosa sat up and glared at him. 'That is just the pompous, arrogant attitude I hate!' she declared.

  Adam laughed and grasped her hands. 'I didn't say I believed that,' he said mildly. 'I'm sure it's what our revered legislators thought though. Rosa, my love, don't you know me well enough to understand I'd never seek to control my wife that way?'

  He pulled her gently towards him and she went willingly back into his embrace. In her lonely state Adam was the one fixed point. His kisses soothed and comforted her. Bereft of her father and sister, and Max, though she tried hard not to think of him, with Jack being even more uncommunicative than before, she needed someone to confide in, someone who supported her.

  At home there was only Winnie, and the old woman, who had been her mother's nurse before she came to look after her children, and stayed to housekeep for them, would hear nothing against Jack. He was the man of the house, and his word was law. She deplored the arguments which, she maintained, Rosa began by her interference in a man's province. According to her Rosa should have permitted Jack to run the business how he wished, and when Rosa protested that he would ruin it Winnie just sniffed and said he was bound to know best.

  Only when Adam's embraces became warmer, more urgent, did Rosa sit up and push him away. 'No. Please, Adam.'

  He sighed. 'I'm sorry, Rosa, but I love you so much. I want to marry you. Let me take you out of it.'

  Rosa shook her head and bent to straighten her clothes. 'Adam, I just don't know! There are so many things to consider. To start with it's far too soon after Father's death, and I have to keep some control over the business. When I am sure of that going well I still want to act. I'm not ready for marriage.'

  'You could act as much as you wanted with local amateur societies.'

  'That's not the same.' It wasn't anything like the thrill of knowing she was good enough to become a professional actress, though few people understood.

  He didn't seem to hear her. 'I know it's very soon after your father's death, but the circumstances are unusual. No one would condemn you. It could be a very quiet wedding.'

  'I wouldn't care what anyone said, but I can't decide yet, Adam.'

  'And you don't need to be concerned about the money you'll get from the business, I have plenty without that,' Adam urged.

  'I'm going to give Celia half of my share,' Rosa said with a sigh. 'When I can find her. I know Father would have changed his will back when he'd calmed down, but he didn't have time.'

  'Jack won't do the same, I suppose?'

  'No, he thinks she deserved to be cut out.'

  'Have you heard from her at all?'

  'No, and Agnes swears she hasn't either. I believe it's the truth, because she sounds aggrieved, as though she's bearing Celia some sort of grudge.'

  'Which you, my darling, don't, when she's leaving you to bear everything at home.'

  'But she doesn't know about Father. I begrudge her being on the stage, if that's where she is, and free of all my problems. But if she'd heard, surely she'd have come home.'

  'She may when she's had her twenty-first birthday. That's in August, isn't it? Perhaps she'll come home when she's of age and no one can stop her from acting. She'll be keeping out of the way until she feels safe.'

  'If only you're right. Yet it will be such a horrible shock for her, when she comes home to find Father dead.'

  *

  Jack was in the yard when Rosa and Adam rode in. Adam nodded to him, smiled at Rosa, and refused her invitation to stay for the midday meal.

  Jack took her bridle and waited while she dismounted. 'You're getting very close to Adam Thorn. Do you intend to marry him? It would be a sort of poetic justice, I suppose.'

  'I don't have any plans to get married,' Rosa said sharply. 'And what do you mean by that?'

  Jack brushed his hands over his eyes. 'I don't know. Nothing. Take no notice of me, I'm tired. But Thorn's not the right man for you.'

  'You've disliked him ever since you came back from the army, haven't you?' Rosa said, perplexed. 'Yet when you were both at the Grammar school you were friends, despite his being younger.'

  'Things change. I'm older, and perhaps I know more.'

  He refused to elaborate, and Rosa shrugged it off. She was busy that afternoon, for she was going to see the proprietor of the Red Lion to arrange with him to take orders for the business, as he did for other hauliers in the town. She still hadn't returned, having taken the opportunity to do some shopping in the High Street on her way home, when Jack came home at the end of the day. Rosa found him in the office talking on the telephone.

  'I'm buying a new waggon for Satan,' he announced.

  'That dreadful horse that's been eating his head off for over a year?' she demanded.

  'He's been at pasture, we're not lavishing best oats on him.'

  'Just paying rent for the field. Jack, you didn't manage to train him to harness before.'

  'He was too young, and he needed feeding up to be in better condition. I'm going to bring him in, and this time I'll be able to concentrate.'

  'He won't earn his keep pulling a waggon. And we'd have to hire yet another driver if you wanted to use him, and our profits have been falling anyway. Many people prefer to use the motor vans that are going round.'

  'It's my business, and I'll do as I choose,' Jack declared huffily.

  'It's our business,' Rosa corrected.

  'Mine. And I'm not afraid of taking risks in order to win greater prizes. Not like cautious, fussy Rosalind!'

  ***

  Chapter 8

  'Rosa! I'm here!'

  The voice did
n't penetrate Rosa's concentration for a few seconds, she'd been immersed in trying to make the totals match. Then she threw down her pencil and ran out of the office. In the kitchen Winnie had collapsed onto the fireside chair, fanning herself vigorously with her apron, crying and laughing, while Celia shook the rain from her umbrella.

  'Celia!' The sisters embraced, then Rosa held Celia away from her. 'You look well, there's a bloom in your cheeks. Oh, Celia, why didn't you write?'

  'I couldn't! Not until I was twenty-one. Father would have made me come home. I was happy at last. I was a real actress.'

  She held out her hand and Rosa saw Gilbert standing in shadow beside the back door. He smiled and came forward. 'I came with Celia to help her confess and beg pardon,' he explained. 'We're in Birmingham this week, and the silly gudgeon thought you'd be cross with her.'

  Celia glanced at him and bit her lip. She'd wanted to keep him in the background, but at the last minute had begged him to accompany her. 'We bought you some tickets. And look who else is here,' she said hurriedly. 'It's Max Higham, we met on the train.'

  Max, until now hidden by Gilbert standing in the doorway, came forward. He was unsmiling, and looked as though he didn't want to be here. Then she recalled their last odd meeting and felt embarrassed herself. But while he was formally shaking her hand Celia continued chattering and Rosa had to turn her attention back to her sister.

  'Where's Father?' she asked eagerly. 'I asked Sid, but he just ran back into the stables. Is Father out? Oh, I do hope not. We have to catch the train back in an hour.'

  Winnie's suppressed sobs erupted into a wail, and Celia glanced impatiently towards her. Rosa took her arm.

  'Come into the parlour,' she said gently. 'Winnie, pull yourself together and make a pot of tea.'

  When Celia and Gilbert were seated together on the sofa, Max unobtrusively sitting on a hard chair near the window, she told them about the drowning. Celia stared in amazed disbelief, and then, as the truth hit her, burst into noisy tears and threw herself into Gilbert's arms.