Rosie Read online

  Donald ran straight to his mother, enveloping her in one of his bear hugs and sniffing rapturously at her perfume. Rosie stood back, feeling self-conscious and superfluous. She knew why a member of staff had to stay in the room, but she couldn’t see Donald escaping or throwing some sort of tantrum, not when he was so thrilled to see his parents.

  Mrs Cook had tears in her eyes when Donald finally let her go. Rosie glanced at Mr Cook as Donald went to embrace him; his eyes were swimming too, although he tried to hide this from both Rosie and his wife.

  ‘This is Smith,’ Donald said suddenly, taking Rosie by surprise as he bounded back across the room towards her and caught hold of her hand. ‘She’s my f-f-friend.’

  ‘Then Miss Smith had better come over and sit with us.’ Mr Cook smiled at her, and it warmed Rosie.

  For the first part of his parents’ visit, Donald chattered non-stop, about what he’d had for meals, the other patients, even about the rain and how it stopped them all going into the garden. His parents seemed quite happy just to listen, though Rosie felt it was sad he wasn’t asking them questions about home. Then quite suddenly Donald jumped up from the settee where he’d been sitting with his mother and, holding her hand, dragged her over to the window.

  ‘Those are M-M-Michaelmas daisies,’ he said, pointing out a clump of the purple flowers just outside the window. ‘Smith s-s-said they are p-p-perennials, that means they come up every year.’

  This display of a remembered lesson astonished Rosie, but Donald went on, pointing out other flowers. There weren’t many, as the front garden wasn’t kept well like the back, but he got all the names right.

  Mrs Cook looked at Rosie quizzically.

  ‘I like gardening,’ Rosie said by way of an explanation. ‘I’ve been telling Donald a bit about it when we’re out in the back garden.’

  ‘And you show me the book,’ Donald reminded her excitedly. ‘Smith is nice, Mummy, she gets me to show her the words I can read in magazines and she tells me stories and sings songs.’

  The most extraordinary thing was that Donald didn’t stutter once in that last statement. His father sat up straight in his chair, seemingly more aware of that than the content of what Donald had said.

  As the visit went on, Donald talked more and more about ‘Smith’, to the extent that Rosie began to squirm. Pat Clack brought in tea. Mr and Mrs Cook told Donald about his older brother, Michael, who had a new baby called Robin, and they got out some photographs to show him. Rosie felt easier then as Donald was at last weaned off her as a subject.

  Rosie hadn’t lost her curiosity since coming to Carrington Hall, and as Donald chattered to his parents she was glad of the opportunity to study them. She had never met anyone rich before and she had expected wealth to show on people like a badge. But it didn’t show on the Cooks, at least not in the flamboyant way she had imagined. They had good clothes – Mrs Cook’s blue coat looked as if it had been made to measure and the cluster of blue stones on her brooch weren’t just glass. Her shoes were dainty crocodile ones which matched her handbag, and there was the big, gleaming black car outside in the drive. But they didn’t put on any airs and graces.

  Donald had the same sad blue eyes, wide mouth and fair hair as his mother, but he’d inherited his father’s height and his slightly jutting jaw. But what pleased Rosie most about these people was their real pleasure in being with their son. She didn’t once see them sneaking a look at a watch, or hear a yawn; they laughed with him, encouraged him to talk. This was no duty visit from rich people who’d abandoned their child because he was an embarrassment to them. They really did love him and they were reluctant to leave him.

  She wondered if they knew Donald hadn’t worn the clothes he had on today since their last visit, or that the rest of the time he wore whatever happened to fit him from the store room. She wondered too if they had any idea how bleak the day room was, or how many scratches and bruises he’d had from other less placid patients. Would Mrs Cook be shocked if she saw he had to eat his food with a spoon, or spend the night smelling other patients’ urine or worse until the morning? She was pretty certain they knew none of this.

  At four Rosie tactfully reminded the couple that Donald had to go back to the ward. Donald got up, hugged both his parents and made for the door quite cheerfully, without any protest. But as Rosie went to follow him Mrs Cook caught hold of the sleeve of her cardigan.

  ‘Miss Smith,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Could you come back down after you’ve taken Donald upstairs? We’d like to speak to you in private.’

  Rosie felt very uneasy as she returned five minutes later. Matron didn’t approve of staff becoming involved with patients, her excuse being that the patients suffered when the member of staff left. Rosie thought this might be why Matron had asked her to meet the Cooks today, guessing that Donald would make too much of her and upset them. Matron always took Saturday afternoons off, so she was probably sitting somewhere gloating over the thought of her most junior chargehand getting a dressing down.

  But as Rosie came back into the sitting-room, both Mr and Mrs Cook beamed at her.

  ‘We’ve never seen our son in such good spirits,’ Donald’s mother said, patting the settee for Rosie to sit beside her. ‘I just felt compelled to say thank you for taking care of him.’

  ‘You taught him flower names and he remembered them,’ Mr Cook said. ‘In fact today he seemed almost, well, normal.’

  ‘He is normal,’ Rosie said with some indignation. ‘He’s just a bit simple, that’s all.’

  Almost the second the words left her mouth she regretted them. She had no business to be airing her views on a patient. That was the doctor’s or Matron’s job. She waited to be slapped down, not daring to look at either parent.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, still hanging her head. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that I like Donald.’

  ‘You should say what you think,’ Mrs Cook said, and her voice seemed to have a smile in it rather than anger.

  Rosie glanced up and saw the woman was indeed smiling, and those eyes which had looked sad before were now sparkling with amusement. ‘You’ve just said words that every mother in my position wants to hear,’ she said. ‘But I’m very curious as to why you think you shouldn’t have said it.’

  ‘Because I’ve only been here a few weeks. Because I’m too young and inexperienced to have an opinion about Donald.’

  ‘It couldn’t be that you are afraid of displeasing Matron?’ Mr Cook asked pointedly, raising one thick eyebrow. ‘Anything you might like to say to us, Miss Smith, we will treat as confidential. We asked you to come back down because we sensed you really were our son’s friend. So we want your opinion, regardless of whether you feel too young or too inexperienced for it to be of any value.’

  Rosie looked at Mrs Cook, then back to her husband. They both had identical open expressions on their faces, and she knew they really did want the truth.

  ‘I don’t think he needs to be here,’ she blurted out. ‘In fact, if you don’t mind me saying so, I think it’s going to make him worse if he stays here much longer.’

  Suddenly she didn’t care if she got the sack, there was a fiery ball of anger inside her which she had to let go. The world was full of injustice and prejudice and maybe giving her opinion on Donald wouldn’t change that, but if she did speak out, his life might improve.

  She told them everything – the lack of stimulation, of Donald being subjected to seeing and hearing disturbing things. She couldn’t quite bring herself to tell the tale Linda had reported, that Archie had been caught once or twice trying to make Donald masturbate him, or that all the girls were a little anxious about what went on in the dormitories after the patients had been locked in for the night. But she said how she wished she could take him out to the shops or on a bus ride, of her certainty that with a little help he could learn a great deal more. Finally she told them how he’d sung ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ and said that he remembered his mother singing it
to him.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, as Mrs Cook dabbed her eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you by telling you that. It’s just that he has got a good memory and he’s capable of doing so much more than he gets a chance to do here.’

  ‘Miss Smith, you are very young,’ Mr Cook said, putting one big hand on her shoulder. ‘You are also disturbingly frank. But we are touched by your concern for our son and very grateful to you for sharing your views with us.’

  ‘We never wanted to send Donald away,’ Mrs Cook said in a quavering voice. ‘We were coerced into it. People talked about him, blamed him for all sorts of things and we were afraid for him. A year ago Matron said she thought it would be kinder to him if we were not to come so often. She said he was always distressed afterwards. But it hurts us so much to stay away.’

  Rosie was tempted to say she was certain this was rubbish, but she knew she’d said too much already. ‘I can’t say anything about that as I wasn’t here last time you visited,’ she said. ‘But if it will make you feel better I could drop you a line in the next day or so and tell you how he was after this visit?’

  ‘You’d do that?’ Mrs Cook looked very surprised.

  ‘Only if you promise not to let on to Matron,’ Rosie said. ‘But don’t write back to me, will you, because someone might see the letter.’

  The couple looked at one another for a moment. Rosie thought she’d gone too far.

  Mr Cook cleared his throat. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, reaching into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and drawing out a card. ‘This is our address and telephone number. Could we impose on you to telephone us sometimes in the evenings, that way we could talk about Donald more easily. You can reverse the charges.’

  Rosie had never had any cause to use a telephone. She didn’t have the first idea about how to go about it. But she wasn’t going to admit that. She would find out how to do it.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, slipping the card into her pocket. ‘But I ought to go now, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Thank you so much.’ Mrs Cook got up and took Rosie’s hand. She didn’t shake it but pressed it between her two hands. ‘We’ll sleep a great deal easier knowing Donald has you as a friend.’

  Rosie left them, hurrying out before someone noted how long she’d been speaking with the couple. She glanced at the card, saw an address in Sussex, and put it away in her pocket, reminding herself she would need to tuck that away from both Matron’s and Maureen’s prying eyes.

  On Monday evening Rosie made her first telephone call to the Cooks from the telephone box outside the library. She was surprised to find it very easy, and even more astounded to hear Mrs Cook’s voice as if she was just a little further down the street. It was a happy call. Donald had suffered no ill effects from their visit; if anything he was brighter and more contented than he’d been before. Rosie promised she would telephone again next month, unless his parents managed to get up again before that.

  As she walked back later to Carrington Hall she saw some girls of her age waiting at a bus stop. They were giggling and pushing one another, excited as if they were going somewhere special. She paused in a shop doorway to watch them, and felt a pang of envy. None of them was any better dressed than she, they were all wearing quite shabby old gabardine school raincoats left open to show off their quite ordinary dresses, but the way they’d made up their faces and curled their hair reminded her that every other sixteen-year-old in London probably knew more about make-up and hairstyles than she did.

  As the bus came along Rosie walked on thinking that perhaps it was time she dropped her country-girl look and took up Linda’s and Mary’s offer to take her dancing with them. If nothing else it might take her mind off her father. It might even make the ache inside her a little less, and the future a bit brighter.

  She hesitantly broached the subject with Linda and Mary and they gave her no opportunity to back out at the last moment and bought a ticket for her for the dance on the following Saturday at the local parish hall.

  ‘It won’t be anything to be scared of,’ Linda insisted. ‘There’s always more girls than fellas there and all you can drink is lemonade. But it’s a good place to give you confidence.’

  The following evening Linda taught her the rudiments of the waltz, and Mary went through her few clothes to sort out what she would wear.

  Rosie couldn’t say she truly enjoyed the dance. The hall looked pretty enough decorated with balloons and streamers, but she felt silly shuffling around the floor with Mary, trying hard to pretend she could really waltz. The girls outnumbered the boys two to one and she felt very old-fashioned in her print summer dress next to the local girls who were all decked out in copies of American fashions with tight sweaters and full skirts. The mascara Linda had insisted she wore made her eyes feel sore and her feet ached in a borrowed pair of Mary’s high heels. But she liked the band. They all wore dark blue jackets and dickey bows and they played after the fashion of Victor Sylvester, which seemed terribly sophisticated. She made up her mind she would learn to dance properly and spend all her wages on some fashionable clothes before she ventured out with them again.

  *

  November passed very slowly. Eisenhower won the American presidential elections on the 4th. On the 18th, Jomo Kenyatta was charged as head of the Mau Mau, but though Rosie tried to interest herself in world news, she could see no further ahead than her father’s impending execution. The other girls spoke expectantly of Christmas. Each night in the staff room the sewing machine whirred as Linda made dolls’ clothes for her nieces, and Mary’s knitting needles clicked away as she struggled to finish a cardigan for her mother before her visit to Ireland.

  But Rosie had no one she wanted to make a present for. Her father was on her mind from first thing in the morning, until she fell asleep at night, but somehow she had to keep up the pretence of being interested in anything and everyone. There was an appeal, but it was lost, and she was aware that Cole would now be in the condemned cell, watched every minute of the day and night.

  Rosie wrote him one last letter, enclosing it with one to Miss Pemberton, asking that she got it to him. She had so much to say, but yet so very little. Finally all she managed was to say he was in her thoughts and that she loved him.

  On the eve of Friday, the 4th of December, she didn’t sleep a wink. Cole was to be hanged at eight in the morning. She kept the night-long vigil with him, turning over and over in her mind all the good memories, and praying silently that he would stay calm and his death would be quick.

  As Friday was her day off, Rosie feigned deep sleep when the alarm went off at six-thirty. Once Maureen had gone downstairs she sat up in bed with the clock in front of her and watched the hands moving slowly towards the time of her father’s execution.

  By five to eight she was sobbing uncontrollably with fear and grief. Cole’s face was so clear in her mind, it was almost as if he was standing before her. Dark, dark eyes full of sorrow, all bravado and swagger gone. She mentally kissed and hugged him, recalling the soapy smell of him in the mornings and offered up a prayer that he would sense her presence too at his moment of death.

  She seemed to see him being brought out of his cell, hands tied behind his back and flanked by two prison officers. In her heart she knew he would keep his courage and pride even when they put the sack over his head and the rope around his neck.

  ‘God bless you, Daddy,’ she whispered as the hands finally reached eight. ‘I love you. And I forgive you.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Get this down you, Smith,’ Linda pushed a tumbler of gin and orange into Rosie’s hands and passed another to Mary who was putting on her make-up at the dressing table.

  It was New Year’s Eve and the three girls were going up to the West End to join in the celebrations. Linda insisted they all got ‘tanked up’ as she called it, before they even left Carrington Hall as the pubs would be very crowded.

  Rosie sipped the drink and shuddered. ‘That’s vile,�
�� she exclaimed.

  ‘So’s sex the first time,’ Linda said with a snigger. ‘But that don’t stop people getting the taste for it. Look at Mary! She’s put the frilly knickers she had for Christmas on, just in case.’

  Mary turned on the stool at the dressing table, her face pink with a combination of a liberal layer of Pan Stik make-up and indignation. ‘Are you saying I’m easy?’

  ‘Bejesus no,’ Linda replied in a mocking exaggerated Irish accent. ‘ ’Aven’t I been told you convent girls never let a man’s ’and creep beyond your knees? So I reckon you must be gonna strip off and jump in Trafalgar Square fountain.’

  ‘Eejit,’ Mary scoffed. ‘It’s freezing tonight, so it is. If you must know, I was tempted to put on the warm ones Mam gave me. But I’d die of shame to be sure if I got run over and they had to peel those off me.’

  Rosie sat back on the bed and sipped the sweet sticky drink. She felt happy tonight. A fun night out, a brand new year ahead of her. She had already made her new year’s resolution and that was to become a Londoner, in appearance, mentality and behaviour.

  Londoners, as she saw it, were first in line for everything. New films and plays, fashions, crazes, all began here. Elsewhere in England people were still living in much the same way as they had before the war, seemingly unaware that a whole decade had passed by. Yet here in London, despite the wholesale destruction caused by bombs, they were moving on, clearing the bomb sites, tearing down damaged houses and rebuilding. Rosie felt that Londoners were faster and more forward-thinking than their country counterparts. They embraced the new ideas from America with enthusiasm – modern housing, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and motor cars alike.

  Their exuberance for life and progress was clearly illustrated in the newspapers, where even the most momentous news story was swiftly eclipsed and forgotten by something more dramatic. This point was driven home to Rosie at the time of her father’s hanging. It commanded space on every front page on the day, but the next it dropped like a stone in favour of the names Christopher Craig and Derek Bentley. They had shot a policeman while robbing a sweet warehouse in south London and they were portrayed as young hoodlums who had grown up on a diet of American gangster films. Both boys were found guilty of murder on the 11th of December, but although sixteen-year-old Craig actually fired the gun, his companion, nineteen-year-old, simple-minded Bentley, was deemed to be equally guilty because the pair of them had set out on a felonious enterprise together. Because of Craig’s age he was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, while Bentley, despite a recommendation for mercy from the jury, was given the death sentence.