Seth stayed on the job just long enough so the farmer knew he was there, then got on his bike and rode home. It was raining hard and Rosie was at school. He was convinced Ruby would be more amenable knowing Cole was far away, but he was wrong. As soon as he walked in the kitchen, she picked up the carving knife and threatened him.
‘Don’t even think of it,’ she snarled at him, her blue eyes flashing as dangerously as the knife blade. ‘I’ve had enough, Seth. You can threaten me all you like but you won’t be able to hurt Rosie. I guessed you’d come back today and I’ve got someone to pick her up from school and keep her until Cole gets back. I’m going to tell him.’
‘He won’t believe you,’ Seth retorted. He had an erection already just looking at her heaving chest and imagining those pink tits laid bare.
‘He will. He already knows there’s something wrong. He’s been trying to get it out of me for weeks.’
Seth knew this much was true. Cole had asked both boys if they knew why she was so withdrawn.
‘Put that knife down,’ Seth ordered her. His stomach was churning; he wasn’t sure if it was fear or desire. ‘What’s the harm, anyway? You aren’t married to him.’
She gave a tight little laugh and instead of putting the knife down she took a menacing step towards him. ‘I might not have married your father, but I love him,’ she said. ‘If it wasn’t for you, Seth, we’d be the happiest couple in the world. It’s you that causes all the problems. You were a strange kid right from the start, and as the years have gone by you’ve got stranger, crueller and nastier. I was sympathetic at first. I know when your mum ran off it was a terrible shock to you, and I tried to care for you and treat you like you were my son. But you’re out of control now. You steal, cheat and lie, you’re perverted and vicious. I want you out of this house for ever, before you taint Rosie.’
All at once Seth knew she really meant what she was saying. There was strength and determination in her face, her voice was calm and confident. He had badly misjudged her.
Seth had learned at an early age that sometimes when he was in trouble with teachers at school, or his father, it was necessary to back down, to feign remorse while he considered his next move. He did this now, slumping down on to a chair and covering his face with his hands.
‘Please don’t tell Dad,’ he begged her. ‘I’ll go away, get a job somewhere and never come back and bother you. Just don’t tell him.’
She didn’t relent immediately. Still holding the knife threateningly, she launched into a long, bitter attack on him, listing all the unpleasant things he’d done in the past, all the acts of cruelty to Rosie, Norman and other kids in the village she’d found out about. She said she was going to write them all down, along with the times he’d stolen money from her housekeeping purse and his father’s pockets, and complaints from neighbours. Finally she gave him his orders. He was to go up to his room, collect his clothes and be gone. She would make her list and if he ever came back she would give it to Cole immediately.
It didn’t take more than a few minutes to pack his few belongings. He had nothing more than a change of clothes and one pair of Sunday shoes. When he came back down to the kitchen she had put away the knife and was standing by the sink, her arms folded across her chest.
‘Try and make something of your life,’ she said in a much gentler voice. ‘For your father’s sake. He might never tell you he loves you, but he does.’
During her earlier lecture, Seth’s desire for her had flown and been replaced by anger and a need for revenge. But as she spoke of his father loving him, rage swept through him. If it wasn’t for Ruby coming here and changing everything, he and Norman would have their father all to themselves. He hated her.
Ruby turned away from him to reach up to the mantelpiece above the stove for her housekeeping tin. In that second Seth saw the small axe they used for chopping up kindling by the back door. He grabbed it.
‘I can spare two pounds,’ she said without turning back to him. ‘I was trying to save it for Christmas, but you’ll need–’
She didn’t finish the sentence because Seth swung the blunt side of the axe hard across the back of her neck. She toppled sideways, her eyes wide with surprise, and an odd sort of growling noise came from deep inside her.
She may have been killed with that one blow, but Seth couldn’t be sure of that, so he hit her again and again.
Digging a hole for her body was the hardest thing of all. He knew it had to be deep, otherwise foxes would get her out. He moved a pile of timber first; then, hidden behind it from the lane, he dug and dug. The first two feet of soil came out easily, but the deeper he went the more compacted it was. Only terror of his father coming back and catching him kept him going. Finally, at three in the afternoon, soaking wet with the rain, he finally carried Ruby out and laid her in the hole. Then he quickly shovelled the soil back on top of her, jumping up and down on it till it was flat enough to move the timber back to conceal the grave.
He was sweating when he returned to the cottage. He took his muddy clothes off in the porch, washed his hands, then ran upstairs with the clothes he’d packed earlier to put them back in his room and filled the same small bag with Ruby’s things. When he came back down he wiped up her blood and the mud he’d brought into the kitchen when he’d collected her body. He dressed himself again in his wet, muddy clothes, shut the back door, hitched the bag with her belongings on to his back and made off on his bike to Bridgwater to finish the job there, stopping only to add a few stones to the bag and dropping it into the River Parrett.
Luck and the rain were on his side. He passed no one on the road, and back at the farm his absence hadn’t been noticed. In fact at seven that evening when the farmer found Seth hard at work, he complimented him on continuing to work in such weather and asked if it wasn’t time he made for home.
Seth pulled over to the side of the road. Remembering that first killing had given him the shakes. He’d never regretted it, Ruby had had it coming to her. In fact he was proud of being smart enough to commit the perfect murder.
Everything had gone his way. Ruby had told the neighbour she left Rosie with that day that she had to go and see a sick relative. When she didn’t return everyone commiserated with Cole. They went along with his story that she must have been killed in an air raid. Secretly they thought she’d just run out on him, the same as Ethel Parker had done. So no one ever searched for her.
By day Cole had put on a brave face, and often he acted as if he didn’t care that Ruby had left him. But Seth knew better. Sometimes when he heard his father crying at night he felt bad about what he had done. He even tried to make it up to him by working harder.
‘If you’d only found a way of getting rid of Rosie, you wouldn’t be up to your ears in shit now,’ Seth said aloud.
Rosie was like a thorn in his side. Everything came back to her. Norman, Cole and him could have been fine in those days after Ruby was gone, if not for the brat. Cole worried about her being alone in the house after school, about her growing up wild with no one to teach her any manners. He didn’t seem to remember that his two boys had been alone after their mother cleared off, and that he often stayed down the pub until closing time, leaving them alone in the house with nothing to eat. Rosie was his pet, his little princess, no other kid in the world was as special as her.
So he found Heather.
The night he and Norman came home and found her there, Seth was livid. It made no difference that she’d cleaned up the kitchen and that they had their first good meal in years. Heather was only a few months older than him. It was insulting that his father should bring a girl like her into their home and let her take over without consulting them. Ruby had been quiet and docile, but not Heather. She bawled out her instructions to them all, from Cole right down to Rosie, and before Seth could say ‘sheep dip’ they were all taking off their boots in the porch and washing their hands before meals, while Cole was totally taken by her.
Seth was glad to go off to
do his National Service. He knew it was only a matter of time before the girl ended up in his father’s bed. But what really irked him was that she won Norman round while he was away. When Seth came home on leave, he was made to feel the outsider, a trouble-making nuisance who spoiled the happy family. Norman painted the kitchen for her, Cole papered the bedrooms; as for Rosie, she stuck to Heather like glue, aping everything she said or did.
Seth saw the first chinks appearing before Alan was born. Heather was tired and cross all the time and they’d been fighting. Over Christmas Cole got drunk and he admitted he felt too old to be responsible for another child. Seth saw his chance and hinted that the child she was carrying might not be Cole’s. His father reared up in indignation, just as Seth knew he would, but he also knew what a jealous man Cole was and that once seeds of suspicion had been sown, trouble and rows would soon follow.
Seth came out of his reverie with a start, surprised to see the first light of dawn coming up over the plain. He must have been sitting here for a couple of hours without realizing. He started the car up and went on, but the shaky feeling was still with him. He knew he needed food and a hot drink to put him right again, and a place to sleep where he wouldn’t be spotted.
Thomas arrived at The Grange at midday to find Rosie just as Norah had described on the telephone, almost vacant, as if part of her mind had shut down. The way she showed no real reaction to Thomas visiting again so soon after the last time proved she wasn’t herself.
‘I want you to forget gardening this afternoon,’ he said firmly. ‘We’ll go for a walk instead.’
Thomas hadn’t intended that Donald should come too, but when he tagged along he hadn’t the heart to tell him to go home. Once they were out in the fields walking towards Heathfield, however, Donald bounded on ahead and Thomas began speaking more seriously to Rosie.
‘I’m not going to make light of Gareth rejecting you,’ he said, coming straight to the point. ‘I know it hurts and it’s made you feel worthless. But you must see, Rosie, that he is the worthless one, not you.’
She didn’t reply. In fact it was almost as if she hadn’t heard him. Thomas caught hold of her arm and pulled her round to face him, tipping her face up to his.
‘Do you know what I see in your face?’ he asked, looking right into her eyes.
She shook her head.
‘I see strength,’ he said simply. ‘The very first time I saw you back at May Cottage when you came out of those bushes where you were hiding, I noticed it. Your expression then reminded me of East End kids – defiant and quick-witted. You looked like a little ragamuffin in your big shabby dress and your hair all tangled, but I knew right away that you’d be a force to reckon with.’
Rosie grimaced. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Because it makes me sad that you have all that strength, yet sometimes you just accept things when you shouldn’t. I’m not going to repeat all the old lectures I’ve given you so many times before about your father’s sins not being yours. You know that already. But what I do want to make you see today is that Gareth has actually done you a great favour.’
To Thomas’s delight that defiant look flashed back into her eyes. ‘He’s what?’ she retorted indignantly.
‘A favour,’ Thomas repeated. ‘Because of him you accepted sliding into a comfortable rut. Ever since you met him, just seeing him when he had time off, you haven’t had so much as a glimpse of the outside world. You haven’t been to a dance, you haven’t flirted with any other boys or sat about giggling with other girls. In fact you haven’t got a clue about what other girls of your age get up to. You accepted seeing only what Gareth wanted you to see.’
‘That’s not true,’ she said, brushing away his hand from her chin.
‘It is,’ he insisted. ‘And I can tell you too how it would be if you married him. First, you would spend a year or two in a couple of rooms, you’d make it cosy and you’d visit his parents every Sunday. Then you’d get pregnant and Gareth would pull out all the stops to get you a better home. Maybe he’d get enough money together to buy a little house somewhere near his parents, but more likely you’d get a council house. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, so far. But let’s just flick forward a few years. You’ve got your home and a little garden all of your own, two or three small children. But Gareth works long hours to keep all this going; he’s grumpy when he gets home, so he takes off to the pub every evening. He wants his home to be just like his mother’s, everything spick and span, dinner on the table as he gets in, but he doesn’t want to talk to you.’
‘It wouldn’t have been like that,’ she said angrily. ‘It wouldn’t.’
‘Oh yes, it would,’ Thomas went on. ‘But because you’ve got a good mind, Rosie, you’d have woken up one day and seen it for yourself. You’d have realized that you’d accepted second best, and you’d have felt cheated. You’d have wanted your children to be out playing in fields. You’d have wanted passion and new experiences – to see the world.’
‘All women have to compromise when they get married,’ she said stubbornly. ‘That’s what marriage is all about.’
Thomas shook his head. ‘No, it’s not, Rosie. It’s about sharing a life with someone because you can’t live without them. It’s about joy and working together to achieve the same dreams. True, there are ups and downs; few people go through married life without hiccups. But you both have to set out on the same path with the same goal in view. You two were never really on the same path, or if you were you came to a fork in it some time ago and went off in different directions.’
‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’ she said sarcastically. ‘Because if it is, it hasn’t worked.’
‘No, it’s supposed to make you look at it all more objectively. You’ve discovered that Gareth doesn’t have much compassion. He’s wooden-headed and blinkered. He wants a wife who will do exactly as he tells her. He only cares about himself.’
Rosie sighed. She knew in her heart that everything Thomas had said was true, but she couldn’t bear Gareth to be so maligned. ‘It’s his mother who’s made him like that,’ she said. ‘She tells him how he should live his life.’
Thomas thought for a moment, remembering all the things Rosie had told him about Mrs Jones. ‘Have you ever considered why she is like she is?’ he said quietly. ‘She didn’t want to leave Wales and all her family. She found herself uprooted in a place she never fitted into. It didn’t do her any good ending up in a smart home with every imaginable gadget. She just grew bitter. She is a very good example of what might have happened to you.’
‘But she didn’t have anything back in Wales. They were terribly poor.’
‘Money can’t buy happiness, Rosie,’ he said. ‘That has to come from within.’
They walked on then to catch up with Donald, and to change the subject Thomas began to talk about the impending Suez crisis. Rosie didn’t appear to have been following world news the way she once did, but he supposed under the circumstances that was understandable.
The three of them sat down on the grass later and Donald pulled a bottle of Tizer and some apples out of his knapsack. It was very warm, the sky was cloudless, and in a moment of silence they heard a lark singing somewhere high above them.
Maybe it was the utter peace that prompted it, or Thomas telling her a story about swimming in the East India docks when he was a kid, but Rosie began to talk about how it was in summer on the Somerset Levels: fishing for eels in the rhynes with only a stick, a piece of wool hanging off it, and a worm tied on to the end; cutting peat into blocks for the fire; and picking great bunches of marsh marigolds to take home to the cottage.
Thomas encouraged her. He felt she’d kept all these good memories locked away for fear they might remind her of the bad ones. She needed to re-examine them; it would help her to think objectively about her memories of Gareth too.
Donald lay on his stomach listening to Rosie and Thomas. Rosie had told him many stories but never ones a
bout when she was a little girl before. He found it puzzling that she laughed about her brother called Seth, because that was the same name as the bad man the police were looking for. It was also funny that she talked about someone called Heather, and then Thomas said that was his sister. But Thomas seemed to like Rosie’s stories about Heather and how she found country ways so strange, because he kept laughing. It made Donald laugh too, although he didn’t quite understand all of it.
‘She nearly had a fit when she found the privy didn’t have a flush and that from time to time a new hole had to be dug,’ Rosie said, stopping for a moment to explain to Donald what a ‘privy’ was. ‘She used to be scared to go down there at night because Seth told her there were creatures in there that might bite you.’
Thomas then told them about the latrines in the prison camp. ‘It was just a long, deep, stinking trench. We had a bamboo rail to hold on to, another one to crouch down on, and that was it – one slip and you’d had it. When I got dysentery it seemed like I was out there all night. You’d hear squeaking and rustling, but you didn’t dare look down because if you saw the rats you got so scared you’d fall.’
Donald wondered why Thomas and Rosie were talking about things that had happened a long time ago. Listening to them was a bit like when he tried to read a real book, rather than a comic. He understood some of it but had to keep skipping the big words, and sometimes at the end of the page it didn’t quite make sense. He wanted to interrupt them again and again to make things clearer for him, but something told him to keep quiet. It seemed important to just let these two people he loved talk to each other. It was making Rosie happy again.
It was after five when they went home, and as they walked across the last field towards Mayfield village Thomas glanced sideways at Rosie. Her cheeks were pink again, the slight stoop she’d had when they came out had gone, and she was bouncing along, laughing at something Donald was saying.