A Girl Called Rosie

by Anne Doughty

  ‘I can’t telephone from here, can I? Your aunt might hear.’

  ‘You’re in luck. She’s away over t’ see m’ cousin and won’t be back till after nine.’

  ‘Right. Now you promise not to frighten yourself while I’m gone. You’re not going to die. Got that? Here’s another towel. You might need it. I’ll clean you up when I come back.’

  She picked up the phone and a crisp voice said, ‘Number please?’

  ‘Dromore six.’

  ‘I’m trying to connect you.’

  At least she had no difficulty remembering the Stewart’s number, it was one of the first telephones in Dromore. She listened to the small noises coming through the earpiece on the heavy handset and wondered if she might have been cut off. Then she heard the fierce ring of a bell at the other end.

  ‘Doctor Stewart’s practice. Can I help you?’

  For a moment, she was so taken aback at the sound of Richard P.’s voice that she completely forgot what she was going to say. She listened helplessly as he patiently repeated what he’d said.

  ‘Richard, I’m so sorry … it’s Rosie. I wasn’t expecting to hear you.’

  ‘Rosie!’

  His tone was a mixture of surprise and joy. ‘Rosie, is everything all right? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I’m fine.’

  There was no missing either the concern or the tenderness in his voice.

  ‘I was hoping to see you tomorrow, even if just briefly,’ he went on quickly. ‘Mother says you’re very busy, but I thought we might meet at the weekend.’

  ‘Richard, that would be lovely, but I need to ask you some urgent doctor questions right now. I’m staying with Lizzie and she’s bleeding. I need to know what to do.’

  ‘Right. Tell me what you can.’

  His tone of voice had changed instantly.

  She told him about what had happened so far, explained about the missing period and Lizzie’s innocence about the possibility of her having conceived.

  ‘Yes, it certainly sounds like a miscarriage,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll come right away, but I’d better tell you what happens next in case I’m delayed. I know where you are. What’s the number of the house?’

  She gave him the number, then listened carefully as he explained about the release of the conception sac which was bulbous and could be painful.

  ‘Richard, we might have Lizzie’s aunt to deal with. Could we say it’s appendicitis, or we think it is?’

  ‘Yes, of course. One often gets false alarms with appendicitis. Don’t worry if there’s a lot more blood. It always looks far more than it really is. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  Even allowing for the empty roads and the fact that Richard had borrowed his father’s more powerful motor, Rosie was amazed at how quickly he managed the journey from Dromore.

  Less than an hour after her telephone call, she heard a motor stop outside. Looking down from the bay window, she saw him jump out, snatch his bag out of the back seat and stride towards the front door. She ran down to let him in.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She seems in good spirits. I think it’s me that’s flagging.’

  ‘What about the conception sac?’

  ‘About half an hour ago. It was painful, but I told her it was good practice for having a baby. It didn’t go on for terribly long.’

  ‘Hello Lizzie. I’m Richard,’ he said holding out his hand. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Awful. But I don’t think I’m dyin’ any more.’

  ‘No, we’re not having that,’ he said briskly.

  He took her pulse and looked around, fixing his eyes on a clean towel that covered a pile of stained cloths. He raised an eyebrow at Rosie who nodded and brought the relevant one for him to examine.

  ‘You’ve been lucky that you had Rosie here. There’s no harm done and you’ll be all right in a day or two. The only thing we need is to avoid infection. A bath tonight when you’re feeling a little better. Regular washing and clean linen. I’ve brought some antiseptic you can use and if you’re in any doubt at all you can ring me.’

  Lizzie looked up at him and smiled.

  ‘Neither Rosie nor me’s had any supper. All that blood would put ye off. But I’m starvin’. D’ye think the pair of ye could make some scrambled egg and toast? There’s always plenty of eggs in the kitchen, but not much else. I’ll be all right for a while now,’ she added firmly, looking from one to the other. ‘I’ll maybe go to sleep for a bit,’ she added, dipping her eyelids.

  The boarder’s kitchen was clean and bare, but rather dim and miserable. Even at midsummer, little sunlight ever penetrated its north-facing window and when it did, it was absorbed immediately by the dark wood of the cupboards and by the brown and cream linoleum on the floor. There was a permanent smell of Jeyes Fluid and unburnt gas.

  Rosie fetched a clean towel from the linen cupboard and together they washed their hands in the icy cold water that gushed fiercely from the single tap over the large, square Belfast sink.

  ‘You’ve done very well, Rosie, especially when you had to work out what was happening. I wish some of the nurses I worked with in London could keep so calm.’

  ‘I didn’t feel calm. I was really upset I didn’t know what was going to happen next, till you told me.’

  ‘It’s not what you feel, Rosie. It’s what you do. But it’s sad poor Lizzie had such a fright, because she was so ill-informed. Didn’t you do any biology at Miss Wilson’s?’

  Rosie burst out laughing as they shared the towel to dry their hands.

  ‘The life cycle of the butterfly, the circulation of the blood and the germination of sunflower seeds.’

  ‘You’re joking! No, you’re not. You’re serious.’

  ‘Dear Miss Wilson, she is lovely and kind and full of wisdom about how one copes with the difficulties of living and growing up, but she never married and she thinks such things are not to be spoken of.’

  ‘It could have been very unhappy for Lizzie.’

  She nodded and opened the cupboard door to see whether there really were eggs or not.

  ‘Rosie, there’s something I want to ask you.’

  ‘Mmm,’ she said, her back to him, as she found a whole rack of eggs, began to pick them up and count them into a bowl.

  ‘I can think of no more unsuitable place than our present surroundings. I had quite other plans, but after being patient a whole year, I cannot wait a minute longer. Rosie, will you marry me? As soon as possible. Please.’

  She put the bowl of eggs down on the table as if it were very fragile, turned round and looked at him. He stood leaning against the sink, the one place where he wouldn’t get in her way if she moved between the cupboard and the stove. She could not quite make out the look in his eyes. Excitement. Anxiety, perhaps. Some mixture of both.

  ‘Yes, Richard, I will. As soon as you want, but just suddenly I think I need to sit down.’

  It was seven o’clock on Saturday evening when the very last rose petal was picked up from the marble floor of the City Hall. Dismantling the stand seemed to take no time at all in comparison with the long hours of putting it together the previous Sunday, working behind closed doors, aware of the empty streets of the city and the echoing peal of church bells.

  The Northern Ireland Trade Fair had been a huge success. Not only for McGredy’s, whose order books were full, but for most of the other companies who had put their goods on show or advertised their services. Mr Sam had been delighted, had given them all a bonus and said that all those who had worked so hard in Belfast should take Monday and Tuesday off.

  As she drove back home to Portadown in the company’s van, squeezed into the front seat between Billy and Mary, the van full of the paraphernalia of the display, she looked back on the week just past as over a huge landscape viewed from the top of a hill.

  So many successes and such unexpected joy.

  Apart from Lizzie, no one yet knew of her engagement to Richard. Tomorrow he would be coming
over to meet her parents and to take her back to Rathdrum for her promised visit to her grandmother. She’d no idea what her mother would say to Richard, or whether she would even be there to greet him, but of her father’s response she had little doubt. Granny had spoken often enough of the qualities of her godson and Da knew how good her judgement was.

  She could see his face and that slow smile, so much more frequent these days. It reminded her of a particular smile she would never forget. It was a genuine coincidence that Uncle James, as she now called him, had come back from a visit to the new government building at Stormont on Friday afternoon and paused by the stand merely to say a friendly word and ask her how the day was going.

  Her father was studying the postcards she’d painted in the barn throughout the winter and spring. Bobby and Charlie were standing beside him, blocking him from view. Sam had already been introduced to Mary, who was fixing a fragment of foliage behind a rosebud to give to him, when he turned round unexpectedly and found himself face to face with the man she’d first known as Slater Hamilton.

  ‘Hallo, Sam.’

  ‘Hallo, James.’

  Neither had the slightest doubt about whom the other was, nor was there the slightest awkwardness between them. Rosie did wonder if Granny had been in touch with them both. But what really held her was that slow smile of her father’s, the enthusiasm with which he introduced Bobby and Charlie to ‘Uncle James’ and the way they all stood and talked together before Uncle James had to go back up to his office for the final meeting of his day.

  ‘There ye are Mary. Back home. An’ I won’t see you till Wednesday.’

  Billy drew up at the end of the long lane that ran up to the farm where Mary lived with her family. Rosie watched her go, still wearing her pale pink blouse and her moss green overall, a girl for whom the week in Belfast had been a visit to a different world.

  ‘My goodness, she’s come on,’ said Billy, as he put the van back in gear. ‘She wouldn’t have said boo to a goose a week ago and I heard her doing Brian’s job the day when he was out for his lunch. An’ doin’ it as well as he would. She’s no dozer, Mary.’

  ‘There’s more to us girls than meets the eye, Billy,’ she said, teasing him.

  ‘Well, I foun’ that out when you turned up a year ago.’

  They fell silent, weary after such a tremendous effort, the shadows lengthening as they drove along the familiar road. They moved gently down the dip where the big load had got stuck, passed the new garden wall where Mary Braithwaite’s plants were now a mass of bloom. Two miles on Billy turned down the lane to Richhill Station and swung into the yard.

  ‘That’s you now, Rosie. Enjoy your wee holiday. I’ll see you Wednesday. Have you roses in the back?’

  She collected a last armful of roses, fresh yesterday and likely to last four or five days more, and stood waiting as he turned in the yard and drove back out on to the lane. She waved him goodbye and walked slowly towards the open door of the house. Her father’s bicycle was parked in its usual place against the wall of the barn and smoke rose from a fresh fire.

  It seemed a long, long way from the night her grandfather had been taken ill and she’d spent the week of his dying getting to know the man she loved and soon would marry.

  Sure a good thing’s worth waiting for.

  Her grandfather’s words came back to her as his words so often did. She remembered too what her grandmother had said back in the winter when they’d talked about Richard.

  Granny had been right. He had been waiting. And Granda was right too. Richard’s waiting had given her time to make a life of her own and at this moment she was quite sure their future together would be all the richer for it.

  NEXT IN THE SERIES

  FOR MANY A LONG DAY

  For Sam Hamilton and Robert Scott, the world has changed greatly since the days when they played outside the Salter’s Grange forge where their fathers worked together. Now in their fifties, with families of their own, they are grateful to have work at a time when nearly three million people in the country are unemployed.

  But they have little joy in their wives, Martha and Ellen, and even less support when they are faced with the unhappiness of a son or daughter. Set in the Ulster of the 1930s, For Many a Long Day continues the story of the Hamiltons and their friends and neighbours through that troubled decade. It focuses on the heartache of Sam’s younger son and namesake, and the loneliness and anxiety of Robert’s beloved youngest daughter, Ellie.

  This is a tale of courage and friendship, of disappointment and achievement, and ultimately of the triumph of love.

  We hope you enjoyed this book.

  Do you want to know about our other great reads, download free extracts and enter competitions?

  If so, visit our website www.allisonandbusby.com.

  Sign up to our monthly newsletter (www.allisonandbusby.com/newsletter) for exclusive content and offers, news of our brand new releases, upcoming events with your favourite authors and much more.

  And why not click to follow us on Facebook (AllisonandBusbyBooks)

  and Twitter (@AllisonandBusby)?

  We’d love to hear from you!

  About the Author

  ANNE DOUGHTY was born in Armagh, Northern Ireland. She is the author of twelve novels including A Few Late Roses which was longlisted for the Irish Times fiction prize. After many years living in England she returned to Belfast in 1998 and wrote the first of the novels that make up the Hamiltons series.

  By Anne Doughty

  The Woman from Kerry

  The Hamiltons of Ballydown

  The Hawthorns Bloom in May

  A Girl Called Rosie

  For Many a Long Day

  Shadow on the Land

  On a Clear Day

  Beyond the Green Hills

  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  12 Fitzroy Mews

  London W1T 6DW

  www.allisonandbusby.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2007.

  This ebook edition first published by Allison & Busby in 2014.

  Copyright © 2007 by ANNE DOUGHTY

  The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–1760–6