‘Just drop me a line when you’ve got the address. I’ll come here the next day,’ she said. ‘You’ve still got my letter with my address?’
He nodded and Freda backed away towards the door. ‘Thank you. I’m very grateful.’
It was only as she walked down the road back towards Lewisham High Street that Freda suddenly sensed that Rosie was going to get extra trouble now that Seth was involved. She had a feeling that as soon as he had her address he’d be after her. Maybe she wouldn’t even need to exact any revenge personally. He looked capable of being anyone’s worst nightmare.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Be careful, Rosie!’ Donald called out as she began to climb up the ladder set against an overgrown fir hedge with shears in one hand. ‘Let me do that.’
‘You aren’t as quick as me,’ she called back, laughing down at his upturned anxious face. The truth was she didn’t entirely trust Donald with shears. He usually got a bit carried away, until the hedge resembled a skeleton. This one only needed a couple of feet of straggly growth cut off the top to make it square again.
Rosie loved trimming hedges, especially on warm sunny days. The Bakers’ garden was one of the nicest she’d worked in: it was a series of terraces up to the lawn at the top, where she was now. The Bakers had grown the hedge as a shield against northerly winter winds which swept across the high part of the garden, killing all but the hardiest plants. Now she was at the top of the ladder the breeze was delightfully cooling, and she could see right across the fields as she worked.
She was especially happy today. Gareth had telephoned the night before and seemed to have had a change of heart since last weekend because he thought he might be able to get a transfer working out of Tonbridge. A week on Saturday he was going to take both her and Donald down to Eastbourne for the day. This was why Rosie was wearing just a pair of shorts and a thin sleeveless blouse today instead of her usual dungarees – she wanted to get her legs brown before exposing them on the beach.
Thomas was coming down this evening too, and staying for a few days. She hoped the good weather would last as he always enjoyed coming along with her and Donald to watch them work, but it wasn’t very nice for him if it was wet or chilly.
She wondered if Gareth’s change of heart and suddenly being pleasanter about Donald was because of the letter she’d sent him. She had been so cross after last weekend that she’d written to say she was beginning to have regrets about him, and that maybe they didn’t have enough in common to get married. He didn’t mention the letter, but then that was typical of Gareth. He would never talk anything through properly.
‘Don’t stretch so far,’ Donald called out from below. ‘Come down and we’ll move the ladder.’
‘Mind your own business,’ she called back. Donald had become very bossy in the last year. It was good to find he’d learned so much that he wanted to take control, but irritating too when he thought he knew best. ‘You can’t see what I’m doing from down there.’
It was fun clipping a hedge. She always imagined she was cutting a giant’s hair, a bit off here, a bit more there, then down the ladder to check on her progress. She fancied learning how to do topiary. It would be such a thrill to make a peacock like the one she’d seen in a garden over in Heathfield.
She paused for a moment to check her work. Then, noticing a bit she’d missed to her right, she stretched out to snip it off and all at once the ladder shifted under her feet.
‘Donald!’ she shrieked, clutching on to the hedge and letting the shears fall. ‘The ladder!’
The clump of hedge just slipped through her hands as the ladder slid to one side, and suddenly she was falling sideways towards the terraces.
She landed face down, smacking her knees on to the wall of the terrace. Her upper body lay across the plants and the pain was so acute she couldn’t even scream. She heard Donald yell out and his feet come thundering up the garden, then all at once he was lifting her up in his arms.
‘Put me down on the grass,’ she managed to get out. ‘Then go and get some help.’
He was very gentle, but even so her legs hurt so much she screamed out as he laid her down.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I sh-sh-should have stayed holding the ladder. It’s my f-f-f-fault.’
Rosie opened her eyes and saw he was crying. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she managed to croak out. ‘Just go and get help. I think my legs are broken.’
It was odd the things she thought of as she lay there with the sun beating down on her, pain in her legs growing stronger by the minute: that the Bakers would be cross she hadn’t finished the hedge by the time they got home this evening; that she must have squashed all the flowers in that bed; and that the hedge trimmings must be gathered up. Then she thought of Gareth. He would be cross too if they couldn’t go to Eastbourne and he’d want to know what she was doing up a ladder. She wouldn’t be able to see Thomas either if she was in hospital. She lifted her head once, enough to see her knees, and the sight made her feel faint. They were just a bloody mass.
Donald seemed to be gone for a very long time, but at last he came rushing back through the side gate of the cottage carrying a bottle of water. ‘I g-g-got Mrs Jackson in the sh-sh-shop to phone for an ambulance,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Then I ran home to tell M-m-mum. She’s coming, but I ran on w-w-without her. I’ve brought you some w-w-water too.’
He sat beside her, gave her a drink, then wetting a handkerchief he wiped her face with it. His face was contorted with anxiety, his stutter had returned, and Rosie knew he was blaming himself. But rather than this disturbing her, she suddenly realized just what that meant. She had grown so used to being with him day after day that she barely noticed his progress any more. Two years ago she doubted he would have had any conception of another person’s pain, or felt any responsibility for it. His reactions today had been like any normal man’s, from the time when he urged her to be careful, through lifting her off the wall and going for help. She reminded herself to ask Mrs Cook if he thought of the water all on his own, or if she gave it to him.
‘It’s okay,’ Rosie said weakly and lifted her hand to touch his troubled face. ‘It was an accident, and my fault because I wasn’t thinking what I was doing. You’ve done everything right.’
‘Well, young lady, it’s your lucky day,’ the doctor said as he came into the cubicle with the X-ray in his hands, some three hours later. He was quite old, perhaps even sixty, with white hair and a beard like Father Christmas, but he’d been very sympathetic to Rosie and he’d even managed to make her laugh a couple of times. ‘I think you must have cast-iron knees because there are no broken bones. They are going to be very sore for a while, and I don’t think you’ll be walking, much less climbing ladders, for some time.’
Rosie was so relieved that she began to cry and laugh, both at the same time.
Mrs Cook and the ambulance had arrived at the cottage simultaneously. Donald had insisted on coming with Rosie to Tunbridge Wells hospital, and somewhat reluctantly his mother agreed, promising to come on later when her husband got home from work. From the moment Rosie was brought into this cubicle in the accident department she’d been convinced it was only a matter of time before they whisked her away to a real ward where she would stay for several weeks.
‘Does that mean I can go home?’ she asked.
‘It certainly does, after we’ve put a clean dressing on those wounds,’ he said. ‘Your friend’s parents are here now, I believe, so I’ll just speak to them for a moment and warn them not to let you out dancing for a week or two. Then you can go.’
It was Donald who carried Rosie up the stairs to her room. It hurt terribly to even attempt bending her knees. Coming home in the car she’d had to sit sideways on the back seat with her legs out straight over Mrs Cook’s lap.
‘I’m going to look after you till you’re better,’ Donald said as he put her down gently on the bed. ‘And I’ll do all the work on my own too.’
Rosie let him
plump up the pillows behind her back and just smiled at him. Perhaps it was because of the role reversal that she found herself trying to picture exactly how he was three years ago when he grabbed her on her first evening in Carrington Hall.
He’d been so pale and thin then. An awful haircut and clothes which were too big for him had added to his neglected appearance. But when she came to think about it, the thing which had really repelled her was his wet, sloppy mouth. Now as she looked at him, she saw his mouth wasn’t that way any more. It was still wide of course, fleshy lips that easily curled into a smile. But it wasn’t sloppy. Somewhere along the line, without her ever noticing, that had gone, along with the stutter, and the bouts of rolling on the floor when he got excited.
‘What are you smiling for?’ he asked, his blue eyes looking wonderingly at her.
‘Because I love you,’ she said. ‘And because you’ve been so smart today.’
He gave her one of his special radiant ‘I love you too’ smiles. It dulled the pain in her leg and soothed her anxiety about what Gareth would say when he heard about the accident. In some strange way it was the justification she needed for putting Donald’s well-being and happiness before Gareth.
Thomas arrived at nine that evening. Rosie heard Donald greeting him at the front door, then launch immediately into the story of the accident. Still talking at a hundred miles an hour, he brought Thomas straight up to see her.
‘Poor old wounded soldier,’ Thomas said in sympathy as he came in the bedroom. ‘I bet it hurts like hell!’
‘It serves me right,’ Rosie shrugged. Now that she was sitting up, her legs straight out in front of her, the sensation had become more of a throb and ache rather than the earlier acute pain. ‘At least they aren’t broken.’
‘I’ll have to check daily for gangrene,’ Thomas joked. ‘Donald and I can saw them off if necessary, and I’ll teach you to walk with a peg leg.’
Donald instantly looked alarmed. He didn’t understand adult jokes. ‘You can’t cut her leg off!’ he gasped.
‘Thomas is just teasing me,’ Rosie said gently. ‘Now why don’t you go and get him a drink, then I can tell him how clever you’ve been today.’
After Donald had gone, Thomas pulled up a chair by her bed and sat down, easing his leg out in front of him. ‘Well, this puts us on the same level’ he said with a smile. ‘At least I can have your undivided attention for a couple of days without you springing off here, there and everywhere. Is there any news aside from this tragedy?’
Rosie gave him a quick update on the continuing success of their gardening business and her observations about Donald today, and she mentioned that Gareth had spoken of getting a transfer to Tonbridge.
Donald came back with a large whisky and soda for Thomas and said his mother was making him some supper too.
‘I’d better go on down in a minute and leave you to sleep,’ Thomas said. ‘We’ll have all day tomorrow to chat. Now don’t go worrying about that half-finished job. I’ll pop round there with Donald in the morning and check out what needs doing. I can’t promise to finish the hedge, but I can supervise Donald and hold the ladder for him.’
As Thomas went downstairs he felt ridiculously shaky. He was always worrying about Rosie having an accident while she was working, imagining her lying helpless in agony in an isolated garden, with Donald too distraught to leave her side to get help. He had never admitted these fears to anyone, least of all to Rosie. She would only have laughed at him and called him a worry guts.
He found it odd how losing a leg had altered his perception of danger. When he’d joined the army he’d never once imagined he could be wounded, let alone killed. All the time in the camp when he saw others dying of tropical diseases, he refused to believe he might catch one too. Even when that ulcer spread so rapidly on his leg he was convinced it could be stopped. But perhaps the discovery that he was not special enough to be spared was the reason why he now saw terrible dangers lurking out there for Rosie. She was as fearless and light-hearted as he once was, leaping up ladders, climbing trees, often with implements in her hands that could maim her so easily. But what could he do? He couldn’t tell her that to see her in pain was more than he could bear.
A stronger man would go right away, turn his back on that sweet affection she gave him, knowing it served only to torment him more. A braver man would perhaps admit how he felt and risk complete rejection. But he was no longer strong or brave. He was clinging on to what he had like a life-belt: her friendship, trust and affection. Most days it was enough.
Rosie didn’t go to sleep for quite some time. She could hear Thomas and the Cooks’ voices wafting up from below in the kitchen and it felt good to know they were all close by. A soft, warm breeze wafted in through the open window, she heard an owl hoot in the distance and it reminded her of summer nights down in Somerset. She thought about Alan. He was nine now, and in the last report from Miss Pemberton she said he was clever enough to pass his eleven-plus and go to the grammar school in Taunton. Rosie didn’t feel any sadness about him now. He was so very happy with Mr and Mrs Hughes, Thomas had made the right decision to let him be adopted. She just hoped that one day she might get to see him again.
Her last thoughts as she drifted off to sleep were of the orchard at May Cottage. She saw herself and Alan chasing the hens into their coop at sunset. She could feel the long grass beneath her bare feet, see the sun gradually sinking down into the moors. When she was very little she had believed that the vast expanse of flat land she could see from a perch on the orchard fence was the entire world. She knew better now of course, but tonight she felt as if all that really mattered to her was here in this house.
As Rosie was dropping off to sleep, Seth was eating fish and chips in a small, dark blue Morris van parked in a remote part of the same moors she’d been picturing. He’d left London at ten that morning and gone straight to Chilton Trinity to check out where Miss Violet Pemberton lived. Then he’d driven into Taunton to while away the time until he could put his plan into action.
Seth was slow-witted, but he wasn’t a complete fool. A social worker who had been responsible for taking his brother and sister into care and knew everything about the Parkers wasn’t likely to welcome him turning up on her doorstep, and she certainly wasn’t going to give him Rosie’s address. So he planned to break into her cottage once she was asleep, find the details he needed, then scarper back to London.
Burglary was something Seth knew all about. Right from the age of fourteen he’d been an opportunistic thief, nipping through an open door and grabbing what he could stuff in his pockets. Later on, after the war, he’d progressed to breaking and entering houses in Wells and Glastonbury. He’d never bothered with doing big houses – wealthy people paid too much attention to security and they rarely had cash lying about, which interested him far more than stuff that he’d have to fence. Over the years he’d done dozens of jobs when he was short of readies, and cottages like Miss Pemberton’s were the easiest of all. Hers stood on its own, backing on to fields, and he’d observed this afternoon that there was only an old lady living next door. When this old girl went toddling off to the village shop, he’d nipped in round the back of Miss Pemberton’s and taken a good look round.
Aside from a tiny kitchen there was just one large room, with stairs leading up. Her desk was right under the back window, an address book lying on it beside the telephone. If he hadn’t been afraid the old lady next door might return suddenly, he might have smashed the window and grabbed it then and there. But he’d spotted one or two other things which were worth having anyway, and she might have a bit of money tucked away too. It would have to wait until later.
Seth finished his fish and chips, put on a dark jumper and leather gloves, then tucking his jemmy, a sharp knife and a torch into his belt, and his cigarettes into his pocket, he got out of the van and climbed over a five-barred gate. It took quite a while to walk across the fields and reach the hedge enclosing Miss Pemberton’s garden. It wa
s a lovely warm night, masses of stars in the sky, and enough light from the moon to see where he was going without needing the torch.
He felt powerful again because he was back on home territory. In London he never felt entirely in control of his life; he was a mere runaround for Del Franklin and his boys, and more often than not he suspected he was their patsy. Perhaps after tonight he could make the break from them and move on to something better.
Two minutes later Seth was watching Miss Pemberton from the safety of her garden shed. She’d drawn the curtains at the front of the cottage, but left the back ones open and with the light from a couple of table lamps he could see her clearly. She was sitting on a settee with her feet up on a stool, her glasses on, reading a book. To his delight she was older and smaller than he’d expected, just an ordinary, plump, middle-aged woman. Seth struck a match, lit a cigarette and checked his watch before blowing it out. It was almost eleven. He guessed a woman of her age would go to bed soon; the old woman’s house next door was already in darkness. He planned to wait another couple of hours before going in to make sure she was sound asleep.
A few minutes later she got up from the settee and went into the kitchen. The glass in the door there was reeded, but he could see her silhouette and he guessed she was making herself a hot drink. She opened the back door to let her cat out, but although she locked it afterwards, she didn’t close the little window beside it. The kitchen light went out, then she went back into the living-room and turned the lights out there too. A few seconds later the light came on upstairs and he could see her drawing the curtains.
He heard the toilet flush and water running, but still the bedroom light stayed on. The wooden box he was sitting on was uncomfortable. He wanted to unfold one of the deckchairs stacked against a wall, but he was too scared of knocking something over. Finally, about half an hour later, the light went out.
Seth moved to the floor, leaned back against the box and lit another cigarette. He hadn’t known such utter silence since his days back at May Cottage, and it pleased him. In London there was always noise at night, banging car doors, tyres screeching, drunks shouting. He thought back to nights like this when he went out catching eels with Norman. If they stayed quiet they could actually hear the eels slithering, and when they caught them and put them in a bucket the sound of their skin rubbing together was almost like listening to hot sex. He missed those kinds of things – and Norman. He still didn’t fully understand why his brother ran out on him; they could have had such a good life together.