The Rose in Winter

by Sarah Harrison

  And she didn’t. Or not for some time. The boy moved about on the edges of her life like a corporeal ghost. She could always feel when he was near. He did something to the air in a room, like the game they played at school, a group of them staring at someone until the person felt it and began looking around. Not that she ever actually caught him staring, she didn’t need to. She knew when he was there.

  Her decision to ignore him was less satisfying than she’d hoped. After that first unpromising introduction, he never showed the least inclination to speak to her or even to acknowledge her presence. In fact, he rarely spoke at all. It was impossible to overlook the uncomfortable disparity in their statuses. John Eldridge slept in the tiny room, no more than a cupboard, between the kitchen and the privy at the back. Skinny but surprisingly strong, he lugged in the coal, hauled the mangle, swept the yard, emptied the slops, went out for tobacco and sometimes beer for his father. He kept himself to himself. During these menial, messy activities he was always expressionless, inward-looking and unreadable. When blacking the grate, he crouched over the task, his head bent almost between his knees, rubbing the metal rhythmically, his hair over his eyes, his breathing just audible. He concentrated and displayed no resentment.

  Except then there was school. Molly groused about school, but she didn’t mind it. She was clever enough not to be designated a swot (and was even prepared to do other people’s homework for them, for a small consideration) and sufficiently sharp-tongued to annoy the teachers, a sure route to playground popularity. She didn’t court or inspire affection, but she did enjoy respect. The last, the very last thing she wanted was some hard-to-explain, guttersnipe oik cramping her style. The Eldridges had taken up residence in the short Easter holiday and she dreaded the start of term. The week preceding it had been bad enough because, in spite of being now ‘looked after’ by Eldridge, Annette continued to go out to Premier Tailors. Eldridge himself, of course, was at the fancy goods factory supervising the production of china cats, cabbage-shaped cruets and cheap apostle spoons (he had brought home a set). Molly and John Eldridge were left to their own devices. Molly had acolytes up the road, so on the first of these mornings she took herself off to visit them as soon as she could and had a good moan. When she got back, the boy wasn’t there. He came back into the house not long before her mother and then Eldridge.

  ‘So what have you two been getting up to today?’ Her mother asked, over the watery hotpot.

  Molly could tell from the grim brightness of her tone that this was less of a question, more of a prompt or even a threat. Anything short of the right answer would not be countenanced, but who knew what that was?

  ‘I went to see Flo,’ said Molly. ‘We played jacks.’

  She looked at the boy. His turn.

  ‘And you, son?’ asked Eldridge, wiping his moustache. ‘Been getting to know the place? Playing with your – with Molly here?’

  ‘No,’ said the boy in that voice she heard so seldom it surprised her, as if a cat had suddenly spoken. ‘I don’t want to do that.’

  The oik – the pig – had hijacked her superiority, made out that the decision was his. She felt robbed, mortified!

  An aghast expression bloomed like a thundercloud on Annette’s face, but Eldridge cut in jovially.

  ‘Just so long as you rub along eh? No nonsense, no squabbling. Happy house, eh? That right, Molly Malone?’

  Molly closed her eyes, but not before she’d seen a swift flash of something in the boy’s face. A hot, bright glint intended, she was sure, for her: a glimpse of something like understanding. Perhaps (she was scarcely ready to admit it even to herself) she had an ally.

  But the remaining days of the holiday continued without communication between them and when school began they left the house separately, Molly first, accompanied by her friends Edna and Flo from down the road. Her scathing complaints meant they knew about him and halfway there Edna gave her a nudge.

  ‘Is that him?’

  He was perhaps fifty yards behind them, hands in pockets and head down, dawdling past Meekins the tobacconist so as not to catch up.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will he be in our class?’

  ‘Don’t know. Don’t care.’

  She did care though and hoped he wouldn’t be. She couldn’t imagine how it would feel to have this skinny interloper hanging off the edge of her life at school, as well as at home. Or worse she could imagine it – the embarrassing, annoying, shaming situation to be explained to a far-from sympathetic audience, who would enjoy bringing Molly Flynne down a peg or two. The mere fact of her mother’s remarriage would attract some mean teasing and chi-iking, she had done it to others herself. Even Edna could turn Judas. Molly could hear it in her voice and see it in her gloating smile, the glance that flicked between her and Judy (a sneak would always stick to whoever was riding high).

  There were three classes at the school and John Eldridge, being a year older, was put in the one above, with Mr Brayne, the headmaster and butt of many jokes. Mr Brayne was known to be fair and therefore soft, everyone took advantage of him. The teacher of Class Two was Miss Calloway, a tiny, sharp-eyed weasel of a woman whose relations with her pupils were on a permanent war footing. The strap with its grooved end that hung from the side of her desk was not for show. Her lightning-swift, whippy action was greatly feared, even by the boys – and it was boys she mostly picked on.

  But the oik was in Sir’s class, so it was out of sight out of mind for most of the school day. In the playground, Molly did not concern herself with him. She got on with organising jelly-on-a-plate and Nebuchadnezzar-the-king-of-the-Jews and pretended he wasn’t there. It was like in the house – from time to time she would be suddenly aware of him without exactly seeing him. She told herself she wasn’t interested, which was more than could be said for Eldridge père.

  ‘How are you getting on at school, son? Paying attention, minding your ps and qs?’ Mr Eldridge asked. Annette’s eyes swung that way, but Molly didn’t look up.

  ‘It’s all right.’ John replied.

  ‘Learning something I hope?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s the ticket.’

  ‘Learning that I don’t like it.’

  This was so coolly candid, that it caught even Molly’s attention. She looked up to find the boy was staring at his father steadily. Meaning it. Not cowed.

  Eldridge chortled. ‘What boy likes school? I ask you!’ He looked around. ‘I didn’t. Doesn’t mean I don’t know the value of education.’

  John continued to gaze for a moment and then returned to his plate, scraping gravy and potato on to his fork slowly, with that familiar air of concentration.

  ‘Just keep your head down,’ said Eldridge over-emphatically, ‘and pay attention, and do as you’re told. Can’t go wrong.’

  Which showed what he knew.

  A couple of days later the cry went up in the playground, ‘Fight! Fight!’ and when Molly and the others rushed with everyone else to see, there was Johnny, bashing seven bells out of Colin Dunkley. To be fair, it looked like Johnny had already had about six bells bashed out of him, he was bloodied all around his mouth and nose, the blood viscous with snot and he was staggering like a drunk on his long skinny legs. With his arms flailing and hair flapping across his face, he was howling like a banshee, making harsh, high-pitched war cries, which were dotted with the sort of swear words no one was supposed to know (though they all did, of course). Everyone stood there gaping, aghast at the thrill of it all. The best that could be said of Colin Dunkley was that he was still standing, just – but only because a couple of his cronies were catching him when he tottered and shoving him back into the fray for more punishment. One eye was no more than a puffy, purple egg that was oozing red and the other rolled about like a gobstopper beneath a monstrously split eyebrow. His mouth was a wet crimson and black hole, with at least one tooth sticking out at a jaunty angle. His hands, protruding from the stained cuffs of his jumper, flapped about uselessl
y like slabs of meat.

  Molly saw Mr Brayne advancing from the building at as near a run as dignity would allow, with Miss Calloway in attendance, because of the disparity in their heights Miss Calloway was actually running with a silly tittuping action. Miss Leigh, the young Class One teacher, peeped palely from her classroom window, transfixed by the to-do, but mercifully not obliged to be part of it.

  ‘Johnny!’ screamed Molly – she’d never called him that, or anything, before, and didn’t quite know why she did so now – ‘Johnny! Stop!’

  He didn’t, but her scream caused everyone else to turn away from the entertainment for a moment. The full-blooded shouting of encouragement was one thing – it was expected, you had to do it – but yelling at someone to stop was being a spoilsport. Molly felt Flo, Edna and Judy move the tiniest bit away from her, distancing themselves, joining the herd.

  But because Johnny was still swinging away, yelping and grunting, she screamed again into the lull, recklessly, ‘Stop it. Stop it. Stop it! You stupid bugger!’

  The lull became a goggle-eyed silence through which Mr Brayne wove his way with an automatic, ‘Excuse me please … excuse me …’ and grabbed the collar of Dunkley who was subsiding yet again.

  ‘Dear me, this boy is in a parlous … Dunkley? For heaven’s sake. Miss Calloway, would you …? Thank you. That will do. That will do! Eldridge!’

  Miss Calloway had relieved her superior by simply taking Dunkley’s collar in her hand and then releasing it so that he went down like a bag of coal. Brayne glanced down and flapped a distracted hand.

  ‘We shall have to do something. Will someone please fetch Miss Leigh and ask her to find the first-aid box from the shelf in my office? Thank you, Agnes. Now.’ He huffed a sigh and glanced round, his soft gaze pausing on Molly, moving on to Johnny, then returning to her with a small frown.

  ‘Molly Flynne, I’m shocked. I will not have that language from any child at this school and I am horrified to hear it from you. Please wait for me outside my office.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  She took a couple of steps backward, just enough for the rest of Crewe Street Juniors to close in front of her and then remained where she was, knowing she could still make it to Brayne’s Office before him. Peering between the others she could see that Miss Calloway, the cow, was quite pink-cheeked with excitement. No doubt she was imagining when she might be Head and dishing out the punishment to the likes of these two .

  ‘Eldridge, would you like to tell me what all this was about?’

  Fifty-odd pairs of eyes flicked to the scraggy, bloodstained scarecrow in the centre of the circle.

  ‘No.’

  There was an audible intake of breath – thrilled and incredulous. Mr Brayne cocked his head, eyebrows drawn together in a wriggly line, genuinely baffled.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Brayne folded his arms, prompting more.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to tell you sir.’

  Even to the pupils this comment seemed to miss the point. Calloway looked in astonishment from one to the other, Molly fancied she could almost see her bony little hand clenching around an imagined strap.

  Mr Brayne frowned. ‘It’s a figure of speech, Eldridge. Do you know what that is?’

  ‘No. No, sir.’

  Brayne sighed heavily. ‘Very well. Please tell me what this fight was about? Oh – here comes the first aid box – Dunkley, get up please and go with Miss Leigh, come on lad, on your feet!’ between them he and Calloway hauled Colin upright. ‘I shall hear your side of the story when you’re cleaned up. Eldridge, what do you have to say?’

  ‘We had a row.’

  ‘Well we can see that!’ barked Calloway, unable to contain herself. Brayne pinched the top of his nose, Molly felt almost sorry for him.

  ‘Come with me Eldridge. Miss Calloway, perhaps you’d be kind enough to see these children back to their classrooms and give them some work to do.’

  Calloway would have made a good sheepdog, nippy, hard-eyed and ruthless, Her excited flock were soon chivvied back into the building. Molly pushed her way through the rest, flew along the corridor and plumped down on the bench outside the head’s office just in time. On the way, she caught a glimpse of Miss Leigh in the green-tiled washroom gently dabbing disinfectant and applying lint to Colin Dunkley’s wounds. When Brayne arrived, with Johnny in tow, he looked surprised as she sprang to her feet before recollecting why she was there.

  ‘Molly, I don’t ever want to hear that language again from you. Your mother would be shocked and ashamed. I shall forebear to tell her this time, but this time only. Run along.’

  As she bobbed and made to go, she caught Johnny’s eye and there it was again – the sharp, brilliant look that told her they were on the same side.

  ‘I think that’s when I knew.’ Molly stretched out her arms before her and spread her thin, elegant hands, like fans. Her eyes were soft when she looked at Barbara. ‘Under the skin, you see, we were two of a kind. He seemed always to know it, but it took me a bit longer.’

  They were sitting on their coats – the weather was just warm enough to take them off – and leaning against a tree near the bandstand in Hyde Park. The tune from beyond the ranks of deckchairs was ‘What’ll I Do?’ Directly in front of them sat a fat woman, overflowing her chair, holding the leads of two tiny, bat-eared dogs with curly tails and bulbous eyes. The woman was enjoying the music, her head resting back, hat tilted, her foot bumping in time on the grass, but the dogs sat facing backwards, staring at Molly and Barbara, trembling in expectation of some nameless possible excitement. Barbara wondered if they were the dogs that Johnny walked and, if so, whether they knew they were talking about him?

  ‘What was it about?’ she asked. ‘The fight?’

  ‘Oh … about me. Or anyway about Ma.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Thought she was too good for everyone, apparently, and that I thought I was, too. There was something in that, but then, of course, Ma had moved Eldridge in to help with the rent. So according to those little ruffians, she was no better than a prostitute. Nothing kids like better than someone getting their comeuppance. We were always saying that sort of thing, without knowing exactly what we meant. We just liked being part of the crowd that was saying it. So I’ve no reason to feel superior.’ She looked at Barbara. ‘I don’t suppose people said that kind of thing at your school. No reason to. Anyway, Johnny decided to stick up for us. He didn’t have to and he was probably spoiling for a fight anyway, looking for a way out, which he got.’

  At school, things went from bad to worse very quickly. Fighting and backchat apart, Johnny was sullenly idle in lessons and suffered the ignominy of being moved down a class, where Miss Calloway lay in wait with her strap at the ready. After two weeks of poker-faced insolence and beatings born with magnificent disdain he was sent home with a letter from Mr Brayne, which everyone knew meant only one thing; he had achieved his goal. But Molly was left with the aftermath, tarnished by association. The sly, verbal bullying of the girls and the more overt name-calling of the boys reached new levels. Even though Molly was tough she was used to being a leader and was now being brought down.

  Annette was appalled, but Eldridge accepted the situation with equanimity. The day it happened Johnny hadn’t gone straight home, he turned up after tea, digging Brayne’s sadly creased letter out of his pocket and handing it over.

  ‘Here you are. Now can I go to work?’ He said in his laconic, grown-up way.

  Eldridge went through the letter and the motions – disappointment, the benefits of education, going to have a word, and so forth – but Molly could tell he didn’t really care, he wanted the boy out from under and some sort of menial job would do just as well.

  Not long after that, she and Johnny had a conversation – their first.

  The days were getting longer and she was out in the street, sitting on the front step. Annette hated her doing this, but was prepared to
turn the occasional blind eye; it wasn’t a big house and in rooms, as in life, Eldridge took up a lot of space.

  Molly wasn’t used to feeling left out and unhappy. In fact, even now, she couldn’t quite recognise these feelings in herself. She was, though, indisputably alone and with no one to call on. The acolytes had withdrawn their support and if they retained any admiration it was now covert. In the house, her mother was preoccupied with her new life, which Molly intuited was not all plain sailing and she knew better than to rock the boat. So she sat there, with her knees bent up and her skirt wrapped round her legs in a condition of animal withdrawal. The woman opposite was also out in the road, toddler by the hand, new baby on her shoulder, jigging and humming. Every so often a snatch of ‘Lily of Laguna’, slightly off key, would drift across to Molly.

  His boots appeared in front of her before she heard his voice.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Oh …’ She screened her eyes briefly with her hand. ‘Hello.’

  There was room on the step, but after a moment he sat down cross-legged on the pavement next to her.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Those kids at school. That was my fault, they didn’t like me no more than I liked them and, after I beat that big idiot, you got roped in.’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you do, but I’m sorry anyway.’

  There followed an awkward silence – awkward not through animosity, but through a sense of change. Molly picked at the buckle on her shoe.

  ‘So what have you been doing?’ she asked a trifle grudgingly.

  ‘Errand boy, down at the Castle.’

  The Castle was the pub on the corner. Molly was impressed, in spite of herself. She glanced at his sharp profile with its surprisingly thick lashes.

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Wash glasses, sweep the bar, fetch and carry. Go in the evening some days.’

  ‘Have you got money then?’

  ‘Might have. A little.’ There was no mistaking the gleam of pride.

  ‘Lucky you.’