The Rose in Winter

by Sarah Harrison

‘May I? There’s nothing I’d like more. Would that be all right with you, sir?’

  ‘Carry on.’ Conrad gestured. ‘I’m no expert but I’m told there’s some quite good stuff, either that or various elderly relatives and gallery owners lied through their teeth. Bar, shall we leave them to it and go and await coffee …?’

  Julia bore Johnny away and Barbara followed her father back into the drawing room. He pressed the button by the fireplace that would, in turn, shake the left-hand bell in the box in the kitchen (she’d loved watching this as a child) and let Clarice know they were ready. In other houses, ones bigger, grander and colder than this, she thought, Johnny would have seen such a bell ring often, he would have occupied a strange middle realm between up and down, master and servant. Even at the Gorringes he had been on the edge – the fox, the nimble prey, the man in the outhouse. And yet here he was amid the marble and turkish carpet and cherrywood and crystal of her parents’ house, taking a tour of paintings with her mother. She was light-headed with relief and something else – a sort of happy confusion.

  Conrad offered the silver cigarette box. Barbara hesitated, then took one. He held the silver-gilt lighter to her cigarette, then his. Clarice tapped.

  ‘Come.’

  She pushed open the door and carried the tray from the table outside to the one near the bookcase.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Shall I pour, sir?’

  ‘No thank you, Clarice, the others won’t be long.’

  She arranged a thick, linen napkin around the outside of the jug and withdrew, pulling the door to behind her. Everything was soft, quiet and warm. Everything, as Johnny had observed, was quite wonderful.

  Conrad drew on his cigarette. ‘Your Mr Eldridge seems a nice fellow.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘He knew how to charm your mother. First dinner, now paintings.’

  Barbara smiled, but the word ‘charm’ had alerted her to possible reservations. Charm was crafty. Charm was suspect. Charm would require a counter-balance.

  ‘Did he have a war?’ Conrad flicked ash. ‘It’s not something one likes to ask in company.’

  ‘He did. He doesn’t talk about it much, but he told me that, in an odd way, he liked being in the army. Not the war itself, but the military, the organisation.’

  Her father nodded. ‘Stability, of a sort, at a price. A regiment has often filled the space where a family might have been.’ He let a pause open, stretch and close. ‘You know much about his background?’

  ‘Almost nothing.’ She tried not to sound flustered. ‘That probably sounds awfully odd. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about it and I don’t like to press him.’

  ‘Quite right. Everyone’s entitled to their – let’s say – their privacy. Not so sure about secrets, though.’ He tilted his face, scrutinising hers. ‘Would you agree?’

  ‘Of course.’ She’d told one lie and now added another, ‘I don’t believe he has any.’

  ‘Though of course by definition, if he had, you wouldn’t know. Are you sweet on him?’

  Her father had never asked such a thing before. Had never, for instance, asked her this in relation to Stanley. Now, because she intuited that he already knew the answer, there was no point in a third lie.

  ‘I am, a little.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as a little.’

  The door opened and Johnny and Julia came in, Julia talking animatedly over her shoulder. Fleetingly, powerfully, her mother reminded Barbara of someone, but she could not think who.

  ‘Coffee!’ cried Julia gaily. ‘But you shouldn’t have waited!’

  ‘Don’t worry, Clarice swaddled it against delay.’

  ‘I shall pour. You must come and help yourselves to cream and sugar.’

  ‘Let me pass it round,’ said Johnny, accompanying her and standing in attendance.

  ‘So what do you think of the Delahay collection?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘I adored it,’ said Johnny, coming over with the tray. ‘There’s one of your grandmother that might be a Sargent. Beautiful.’

  ‘Now,’ said Conrad, ‘I’m going to be brutally honest—’

  ‘Please Con don’t!’ protested Julia, cheerfully enough.

  He raised his hand. ‘I want to put forward a topic for debate.’

  ‘Oh dear, if you must.’

  ‘Here goes. “This house moves that truthfulness in a portrait is more important than beauty.”’

  ‘If the subject is beautiful, then there’s no debate,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Indeed.’

  Julia arched her eyebrows towards Johnny. ‘I’m afraid he’s being rude about Mamma.’

  It was now Johnny’s turn to speak and they all knew it. Barbara’s warm feelings towards her father curdled somewhat. How could he be so mischievous as to put a guest, and an unfamiliar one at that, on the spot? But Johnny, with a thoughtful expression, finished stirring sugar into his coffee before replying.

  ‘No, it’s a fair point … I suppose it depends on whether you consider the artist’s genius to be of itself beautiful.’

  ‘Very few artists are geniuses, surely.’

  ‘Perhaps they have talent, then, or are gifted.’

  ‘Can’t say I agree,’ said Conrad. ‘I want him to present me with something that’s easy on the eye: a woman, child, landscape, horse, bunch of flowers (if I must). I want something that I don’t mind sharing my house with.’

  Johnny seemed to be considering this, as he lifted his cup to his lips.

  Barbara interjected, ‘Isn’t that like saying art is just interior decoration?’

  ‘Absolutely!’

  She recognised her father was not being completely serious. His mood was genial, but meddlesome. Having watched Johnny for the first part of the evening; Conrad was now of a mind to provoke and see what happened. Julia had seen all this before and was having no truck with it.

  ‘Don’t be pig-headed, Con, you don’t really think that.’

  ‘I most certainly do. That’s why I’m happy to concede that Percy Snell did an excellent job on your mother.’

  Julia laughed, tried to catch Johnny’s eye, but he declined to smile.

  ‘I can tell you don’t agree,’ said Conrad.

  ‘I think you’re teasing, sir.’

  ‘Teasing?’ Conrad tipped his head back. ‘That shows how little you know me.’

  ‘Well, of course, I don’t know you at all,’ said Johnny earnestly. ‘It’s a guess.’

  ‘Well said!’ said Julia. ‘Con, stop it.’

  ‘I will, I will, not another word from me. But we must continue the discussion another time, eh Eldridge?’

  ‘I should enjoy that.’

  Half an hour later, they left. Johnny’s thankyous sounded sincere and were warmly received, with benevolent smiles all round. Unusually, her father placed a kiss on her cheek, taking the opportunity to say quietly, for her ears only,

  ‘My girl. Nice to see you looking happy, take care of yourself,’ and added something that sounded like, ‘might be a case of Eldritch by name, eldritch by nature.’

  On the whole, it had gone better than Barbara had dared to hope, though she would have liked to be a fly on the wall of her parents’ room when the post-mortem was taking place. Conrad had offered to call a taxi, but they had elected to walk a little way. Outside, the air was full of the fresh, poignant, green smell of the park. The odd car purred past. A policeman wished them goodnight.

  They went some way in silence, side by side, not touching, a little self-conscious after the events of the evening. After a couple of hundred yards Johnny reached for her hand and they stopped, facing one another, in the soft darkness between two street lamps.

  ‘That was a wonderful evening. I do so love your parents.’

  ‘And they liked you, my mother especially.’

  ‘Did I do all right?’

  She put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Johnny, it wasn’t a test!’ But he wouldn’t buy that any more than she did herse
lf.

  ‘It was, of course, it was. I put myself up for it. Did I pass?’

  ‘With flying colours.’

  ‘Because, you know, it means a great deal to me. You mean a great deal to me. And they, well, I never had anyone like them. Their good opinion matters to me.’

  ‘I suppose I take them for granted.’

  ‘Of course. That’s natural.’ They began to walk on. ‘You don’t think I offended your father?’

  ‘Not in the least.’ Of this much, at least, she was confident. ‘He was goading, a bit. You’d have been entitled to take offence yourself.’

  He laughed and she could hear in his laugh that he was relaxing, buoyant with success. ‘I’m un-offendable.’

  They reached the Euston Road and he put his arms round her, hugging her so tight she could scarcely breathe.

  ‘My Barbara.’

  ‘Will you come back with me?’ She whispered and felt him shake his head.

  ‘That woman will be there and I want to do everything properly.’

  She wanted to say but we don’t have to be proper all the time, not when no one’s looking.

  ‘What do you mean by “everything”?’

  ‘Us.’ He leaned back and smoothed her hair with his hands. ‘Everything to do with us.’

  It began to rain again, softly. Pools of lamplight became freckled with raindrops. He put up the umbrella and placed it in her hand. They stood for a moment, he with one arm round her shoulders, until a cab came by and he hailed it.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ she asked. ‘Where do you have to go?’

  ‘Not far.’ He waited while she settled the umbrella. ‘And anyway, I have wings on my heels.’

  This scene was becoming familiar to her, where Johnny sent her on her way and went on his own.

  He was walking in the same direction and as the cab passed he gave a little Chaplinesque jump, tapping his heels together at the side. The cabbie quested for her eye in the mirror.

  ‘That’s a very chipper young gent you’ve got there, miss.’

  She kept her face averted as if she hadn’t heard. She didn’t care if he thought her prissy. What did he know?

  She was about to put her key in the lock when it came to her, who her mother had reminded her of as she came beaming, glowing into the drawing room, ahead of Johnny.

  It was me.

  Julia had reminded her of herself.

  Thirteen

  1907

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Don’t you mean who? Who’s that?’

  Molly didn’t answer. She was busy directing a silent, black bullet of hatred at the intruder.

  ‘Listen young lady.’ Molly’s mother shot out her free arm and grabbed Molly’s shoulder with a hard, pinching hand. ‘You’ll be civil if you don’t mind and—’ a tighter pinch, this time with a shake, nails digging in ‘—even if you do, all right?’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘This is your new brother.’

  ‘What? He never is! I never seen him before!’

  ‘I’ve. I have never seen him before. Well that’s a nice surprise then, isn’t it?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You want to know something, madam?’ Her mother gave her a shake that jolted her head and made her bite the edge of her tongue. ‘It doesn’t matter what you think or what you want. He’s coming to live here, do you understand?’

  Molly could taste blood in her mouth, but swallowed it. She shrugged.

  Nothing infuriated her mother more than a show of indifference. She gave Molly a sharp push followed by a poorly-aimed smack that glanced off the side of her head, ruffling her hair, which Molly hated more than the blow itself.

  ‘Steady on Netta,’ said the man. He’d been standing with his son in front of him, his huge hands on either side of the boy’s neck, but now he moved him aside and came to lean over Molly. A constellation of rusty-brown stains spattered his shirt, just below the collar. She could see the black dots in his skin where the bristles grew, the crimson veins on the inside of his nostrils and hairs curling in the greasy whorls of his big ears. He’d made his eyes wide, round and staring. His breath smelt of spit, old food and tobacco.

  ‘It’ll all be hunky-dory, won’t it?’ He tweaked her cheek. His fingers had the texture of stale bread. The gesture was meant to seem affectionate, but she wasn’t fooled; he was pinching, just like her mother, holding her face still so she had to pay attention. She shut her eyes.

  ‘Don’t be like that, now.’

  ‘What’s she doing?’

  ‘Nothing. Are you?’ He let go Molly’s cheek but she could still smell him there and hear the small creaks and hisses of his great, gross body. ‘We’ll be right as rain, won’t we, Molly? Eh, Molly Malone – won’t we?’

  He cuffed her hair, in the same place. Her eyes flew open.

  ‘That’s not my name.’

  ‘It’s a joke. Can’t you take a joke?’

  ‘She gets a lot of that Malone business,’ said her mother. ‘So maybe not.’

  Molly liked her mother for saying that. It wasn’t much, but she was used to making the most of crumbs.

  The man – his name was Percy Eldridge but she would never, ever, call him by it, or by anything if she could help it – stood up, enormous in the little kitchen. He turned to the boy, who had been completely silent through all of this, watching through the hank of black hair that hung over his eyes.

  ‘You going to say hello, son?’

  ‘Hello,’ said the boy, docilely. He had a soft voice, a little deeper than she’d expected, maybe it had already broken, though he was a squeak shorter than her. Anyway, she wasn’t interested.

  ‘How about “Hello Molly”?’

  ‘Hello Molly,’ he copied parrot-fashion. His eyes were bright and dark, sizing her up.

  The scorn and loathing she felt at that moment filled Molly’s mouth with bile. She turned and ran up the stairs, with her feet hammering on the steps, grasping the banister hand over hand, propelling herself forward.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not having that!’ her mother hissed.

  ‘All right, Netta, it’s all right,’ the man said in his heavy, pretend-soppy voice ‘nothing to worry about, don’t go after her, she’ll come round …’

  Molly closed the door of her room quietly and propped the back of the hard chair under the handle. She would never come round. Never.

  After a long time and a lot more hissed conversation, Annette came up the stairs and rattled the door handle ferociously.

  ‘Open this door.’

  ‘Go away!’

  ‘I will not. Move that chair, young lady, or I’ll have the door broken down. You know I will.’

  Before this might have been an empty threat, but thinking of Percy Eldridge (who was presumably still lurking about somewhere) Molly realised it could be carried out. Better to admit her mother on her own terms than give him the satisfaction. She removed the chair and stood back from the door.

  ‘Thank you and about time.’ Her mother closed the door behind her and kept her voice low, but venomous. ‘What was that all about? I didn’t know where to put myself.’

  Molly’s lip curled. This, of course, is what it was all about: her mother’s embarrassment. Annette was a woman whose nature had been irrevocably warped by a sense of injustice. She had been born to better things and life had cheated her. Her father had been manager of Bournes, the gentlemen’s outfitters. He was a leading light on the town council, a director of the football club and a pillar of the community, with soft hands and a spotless white collar. Her mother ran a lovely home and was always beautifully turned out. The fact that Annette herself worked – as a seamstress in a tailor’s in New Cross – was a source of both pride and shame. She was proud of her ability to earn her own living (her stitching was immaculate, the tiniest in the shop), but mortified that it was necessary. She did not feel herself to be independent, so much as making the best of a bad job. She was a woman for whom the phrase ‘keep
ing up appearances’ might have been invented. She drove herself to exhausting lengths to look smart, to keep the rented terrace house in Savernake Road spotless and ‘nice’, and to inculcate good behaviour into her wayward daughter – the legacy of her first husband, Barry Flynne, from Cork. Barry had swept Annette off her feet, into bed and up the aisle in that order, a sequence of events predicted by her parents, as they never failed to remind her. When, also predictably, he took off after only a year of marriage, there was a distinct cooling in the family. She wouldn’t ask for money and, when her father suffered a fatal stroke in the council chamber, that became academic. Her mother declined in a genteel way and, within a year of his death, she had gone too. Rather shockingly, there was no money to come Annette’s way – they had been living beyond their means. To her credit, she put her shoulder to the wheel, but the disappointment of reduced circumstances was bitter indeed. Her neat good looks became pinched, her trim figure shrivelled to thinness and her nature turned sour. She had married the widower Percy Eldridge without her daughter’s knowledge because, she reasoned, he was a good hardworking man who was going to look after them. She hadn’t mentioned the boy, whom Percy had characterised as ‘no trouble at all’.

  Molly and her mother were fond of one another, but each was the cross that the other had to bear. Now they faced one another across five feet of threadbare rug and a chasm of mutual suspicion.

  Molly said, ‘You never told me there was a kid coming.’

  ‘He’s older than you and he’s going to be making himself useful.’

  ‘That skinny oik?’ ‘Oik’ was a word of her mother’s, which Molly was using against her.

  ‘Yes. Some of the time. His father’s going to be taking him to the factory on a Saturday.’

  ‘What about school? Doesn’t he have to go?’

  ‘I dare say.’

  Molly didn’t know which would be worse, the boy going to West Street Junior with her, or being out of her hair but pulling rank as an earner. She was dizzy with rage and resentment.

  ‘I don’t want him here and he’s not my brother.’

  ‘Call him whatever you like. His name’s John and he’s staying.’

  ‘I shan’t call him anything!’