Rosie Read online

  Rosie quickly apologized and explained her predicament.

  ‘Well, that’s all right as long as you shove off once you’ve looked,’ the woman said. ‘You wouldn’t believe what some cheeky buggers ‘ave bin doing.’

  As Rosie was peering across the road towards the palace railings where the crowds were at their most dense, she had a strange feeling that she was close to Donald, even if she couldn’t see him. There was a black police van right outside the palace gates and she could see frantic movement amongst the people gathered there, almost as if a fight had started. A sort of buzz went around amongst the group she was in the middle of, people standing on tiptoe to see and craning their necks.

  Two policemen appeared to be dragging someone out of the crowd there. The rain was coming down heavily now, making it even more difficult to see what was going on, but as Rosie saw a brief flash of blond hair, without stopping to make certain it was Donald, she scrabbled up over the barrier and out into the road.

  ‘They’ll arrest you,’ the woman bawled out behind her, but Rosie ran on regardless.

  It was Donald. He was struggling as the police tried to bundle him into the van.

  ‘Let him go!’ Rosie shouted as she ran towards him.

  From out the corner of her eye she saw other policemen rushing forward to head her off, but she was determined.

  ‘Smith,’ Donald yelled out as he saw her and the police must have loosened their grip on his arms momentarily, because he broke away from them and ran to her like a child, arms outstretched, meeting her in the middle of the road.

  His face was tear-stained, he had a cut above one eye and his raincoat was torn. He looked wild and distraught.

  ‘Donald,’ was all Rosie could exclaim as he trapped her in a fierce bear hug. ‘Thank God I’ve found you.’

  One lot of police were trying to shepherd them out of the road, Donald was trying to stutter out to Rosie what had happened to him and the two policemen who’d been trying to get him into a van were shouting above him asking who he was and what was wrong with him. Although Rosie was joyful at finding Donald, she was reluctant to tell the policemen in his hearing that he was simple.

  ‘I must get him back home quickly,’ she insisted, once they were back by the police van and the second lot of police had withdrawn. ‘His family will be worried sick because he’s just come out of a home for the day. He hasn’t done anything wrong, has he?’

  ‘Not apart from pushing his way down the front to the palace railings,’ the older of the two officers said. He had a stern expression and he was looking hard at Donald as if trying to gauge if he was dangerous in any way. ‘But on a day like today that’s practically a hanging offence.’

  Rosie was aware that was just a turn of phrase, but it still made her shake.

  ‘Who hit him?’ she said.

  At this point a police car drew up and the policemen left Rosie and Donald momentarily to go and speak to them.

  ‘Someone in the crowd took a swing at him,’ a voice said at her elbow. ‘And if I were you, love, I’d scarper with him before the police come back.’

  Rosie turned to see the voice came from a stocky young man with light brown curly hair and twinkly blue eyes. He was wearing a long brown raincoat and he had a red, white and blue rosette pinned to the lapel. ‘I was just by him,’ he went on. ‘It could’ve turned much nastier, especially with so many children around. But you look white as a sheet, and you’re wet through. Let me help you get him home before they insist on taking you both down the police station.’

  Rosie wasn’t going to let that happen. Mrs Cook would be beside herself with anxiety as it was and Rosie remembered she didn’t even know the telephone number at the flat so she could ring them and tell them that Donald was safe. She had to get back there now, otherwise the whole day would be spoiled for everyone.

  ‘I’ve only got to get back up through the park again,’ she said, clutching Donald’s arm and edging away from the police. ‘The flat’s on Piccadilly. But I’ll be all right on my own.’

  ‘You need help,’ he insisted and with that he took Donald’s other arm and started off back across the road with him towards the park. Rosie had no choice but to fall in with the two men.

  Once in the park and away from the police, the young man paused for a second. ‘I’m sorry. I must seem very bossy,’ he said, grinning at Rosie. ‘I’m Gareth Jones. I got separated from my mates too, so I know how your friend must feel.’

  Rosie introduced herself, said she appreciated his kindness, but really there was no need for him to go any further with them.

  ‘Look, love,’ Gareth said, giving her a sharp look that implied he understood Donald wasn’t quite the ticket. ‘He’s wet and cold, he might even be in shock from that punch. I’m taking you both right home so I know you got there safely.’

  Donald held Rosie’s hand tightly as they walked through the park and he didn’t say a word. She thought Gareth might be right, he could be in shock. Fortunately the crowds were thinner now; presumably they’d all now managed to find places to watch the procession. Rosie explained to Gareth exactly where the flat was.

  He was a very resourceful man. When they found they could no longer cross Piccadilly, he led her down into Green Park subway and up the stairs on the other side. She wouldn’t have thought of that herself. Donald was crying when they came up on the other side of the road, the crowds were dense again and Rosie felt he was getting panicky because he could no longer walk by her side. Gareth sensed this. ‘Hold on to my belt tightly,’ he said. ‘And you hold on to Donald’s,’ he shouted back to Rosie.

  The final struggle through the jostling throng to the glass doors of the apartments was desperate, as no one was giving an inch. But Rosie’s relief when she saw Mr Cook rushing down the stairs to unlock the door, and the joy on his face as he saw his son beside her, wiped out the last terrible hour.

  ‘You found him! You angel,’ Mr Cook exclaimed, his already ruddy face growing even more flushed with delight. ‘We rang the police but they said there was as much chance of them finding him today as flying to the moon.’

  Before Rosie could explain anything, who the stranger was with them, or how Donald had got his cut eye, the entire family came spilling down the stairs to greet them. Everyone was talking at once. Mrs Cook and Susan had tear-swollen eyes and Mrs Cook enveloped both Donald and Rosie in a fierce, emotional hug.

  ‘We’ve all missed the crowning,’ Susan said, catching hold of Rosie’s shoulders and squeezing them affectionately. ‘None of us knew what to do. The men have been in and out like a dog at a fair. The kids were crying because they thought you were lost too.’

  It was only then that Rosie managed to get a word in to introduce Gareth, and explain how he’d helped them get back.

  ‘Well, you must come and join the party too,’ Mr Cook said with a beaming smile and thumping Gareth’s shoulder. ‘It’s the very least we can do. Come on in, son. We’re very grateful to you.’

  Gareth looked shocked. ‘I can’t join in your family party!’ he said.

  But Mr Cook insisted, saying that but for his help there would be no party, and led the way back upstairs. Alicia took their wet coats, Susan brought tea for them. Then as Michael took Donald away to the bathroom to bathe his face and find him some dry clothes, the rest of the family wanted to know all about Gareth.

  As Rosie sat back and watched the family’s warm reaction to a complete stranger, she found herself comparing their code of behaviour to the one she’d been brought up with. Strangers were never welcomed at May Cottage; even men who called on her father in the line of business were rarely invited indoors. She wondered what Cole would have made of the Cooks. They certainly didn’t fall into any of his classifications of people.

  Throughout her childhood she had been conditioned to believe that people with money and class were all snobs who looked down on common working folk. Cole despised the middle classes even more because he said they aped ‘their betters’.
As for the ordinary working people, in the main he dismissed those too because they were so servile and lacking in daring. As she watched and listened to the Cooks, she felt they were the kind of people she should aspire to be like. They were neither snobs nor sycophants. They were in a class all of their own.

  Gareth appeared to be comfortable with them too, despite being a working man with a London twang to his voice. ‘I work on the railways, at Clapham Junction,’ he said. ‘I came up with a group of the lads, but I got separated from them an hour or so before I saw Donald down by the palace. It was lucky Rosemary got there when she did – another moment or two and the police would have had Donald in the wagon off to heaven knows where.’

  Donald came back from the bathroom with a sticking plaster over his eye and a dry pair of trousers on. He was none the worse for his ordeal. Just like a child, the moment he was safe again he gloried in the adventure and didn’t even mention the man who had hit him.

  ‘I saw the p-p-palace,’ he boasted. ‘And the soldiers with the f-f-fur hats.’

  Rosie was very much the heroine of the day. As they all waited for the procession to come by, everyone wanted to know exactly how and where she found him and seemed to think she was extraordinarily clever. After being the most junior member of staff at Carrington Hall and either being ignored or blamed for anything which went wrong by her seniors, it felt good to be admired and cosseted. Along with that was this extraordinarily handsome young man sitting beside her, asking questions about where she worked and telling her he knew Woodside Park well.

  As his hair dried it fluffed up into tight little corkscrew curls, his eyes were a brilliant blue and he had an engaging dimple in his chin. Rosie wondered how old he was. He looked about twenty-two, but he had the confidence of a much older man.

  ‘My parents live in Mill Hill, which isn’t far from there,’ he said. ‘My dad’s a coal merchant, good Welsh stock see,’ he added, lapsing jokingly into a Welsh accent. ‘I tried hard to get away from coal, but now I’m a train driver and I’m still dependent on the stuff.’

  At last the procession finally arrived. First just distant drums and a hush out on the street, then a roaring as people further away got their first glimpse of the golden coach. The entire family rushed to the windows, opening them wide despite the driving rain, and the noise from the crowds below filled the room, drowning all conversation.

  It was so magnificent that Rosie cried. To see such a procession on television was thrilling enough, but television could only give glimpses and not the colour or the detail. The red and gold uniforms, the jingle of spurs on shiny boots, the sheen on the horses’ flanks, the Yeomen of the Guard, the Household Cavalry, footmen and coachmen, it all exceeded her wildest imagination. The golden coach was pure fairyland, so much more exquisite than illustrations had led her to believe. Rosie leaned right out of the window as the coach approached and she waved frantically, and to her amazement the young Queen in her crown and ceremonial robes looked right up at her, lifting one hand in salutation, almost as if she knew that this particular subject would hold that memory in her heart and mind for her entire life.

  A year ago Rosie had had only one decent dress to her name; she’d been a barefoot ragamuffin who’d never been out of Somerset. London and royalty had been as inaccessible and distant as Africa or Australia. But here she was now, leaning out of a window from a grand apartment in Piccadilly, holding a Union Jack and shouting herself hoarse, and the Queen had actually waved at her.

  ‘You will stay and have tea with us?’ Mrs Cook asked Gareth after the long procession had passed and the crowds below had begun to disperse, some making tracks for home, but still more flooding into Green Park to try and get to the palace for yet another glimpse of the entire royal family when they assembled later on the balcony.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Cook,’ Gareth said with a shy grin. ‘But I ought to try to find my friends now. Thank you so much for letting me see the procession with you. I doubt if I’d have found a better view anywhere, or such good company.’

  Rosie found herself staring at Gareth in open admiration. He might be only a coal merchant’s son, but his confidence, dignity and manners were as impeccable as both Michael’s and Roger’s.

  ‘Well, I hope we run into you again one day,’ Mrs Cook said. ‘And thank you once again for rescuing my son and Rosemary. Perhaps you’d like to show Gareth out, Rosemary?’

  After Gareth had said his goodbyes to everyone, Rosie went out into the passageway with him and found him his raincoat.

  ‘It’s still very wet,’ she said, feeling the shoulders. ‘What if you can’t find your friends?’

  ‘I’ll find them. They’ll be in the pub by Charing Cross, I expect. If not, I’ll go on home to my digs in Clapham. But before I go, would you come out with me one night?’

  It had been quite a day for shocks and Rosie’s mouth fell open in surprise. She’d met a few boys at dances, even had a kiss or two as they walked her home. But Gareth was a man, not a boy. She didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I d-don’t know,’ she stuttered.

  ‘Will you at least think about it?’ he said in a pleading voice.

  Rosie looked at him through her lashes. He had endeared himself to her just by being kind to Donald; his bright twinkly blue eyes, clear peachy skin and that wide, beguiling grin were so very attractive. She liked him. But a date!

  ‘Okay,’ was all she managed to say.

  ‘Is that okay to coming out or just to thinking about it?’ he grinned.

  All at once Rosie knew she would kick herself later if she let him go without a proper answer.

  ‘Both,’ she said and smiled because she suddenly knew that this was what Linda called a ‘twist of fate’.

  ‘Next Wednesday evening?’ he asked, raising one dark eyebrow. ‘I’m working the evening shift right up till then.’

  Rosie nodded. It seemed an awfully long way off. ‘Shall I write down the address?’

  ‘No need, I know where Carrington Hall is. And I’ll come to collect you at half past seven,’ he said, and with that he opened the door and was off down the stairs. It was only after he’d disappeared out on to the street that Rosie realized Matron wouldn’t approve of a young man calling at the home.

  ‘Have you had a good day, Rosemary, despite Donald running off?’ Mr Cook asked as he drove her and Donald home at eight that evening. The rain was even heavier now, and the streets deserted once they got out of central London. Donald was in the back seat, almost asleep.

  ‘It was the best ever,’ Rosie said with a deep sigh. ‘I’ll never forget it, however old I get.’

  After Gareth had left they’d had a huge tea, with ham, chicken, salad and sherry trifle. Then Mrs Cook had brought in a cake which she said she’d bought at Fortnum and Mason. It was iced like a wedding cake, with a tiny gold coach and all the horses sitting in the middle. Mrs Cook had given her the coach to take home as a souvenir. She had it wrapped in a paper napkin, along with a chunk of cake to share with the other girls when she got home.

  On top of that she had a date arranged. She could hardly wait to tell the girls that.

  Frank Cook looked sideways at Rosemary and smiled to himself. She was such an engaging young woman, so sensible, practical and calm, but there was another side of her which he’d glimpsed as she watched the procession. She was excitable too, full of fire and laughter, yet he had the distinct feeling she’d been forced to subdue this side of her for some reason.

  He could see exactly why that young train driver rushed to help her. The little cap of glossy coppery hair, those forget-me-not eyes that seemed to question everything, the dusting of freckles on her nose and that ready warm smile were all so delightful.

  ‘I hope you’ll join us again on other days out with Donald,’ he said.

  ‘I’d like that,’ Rosie replied eagerly. ‘But maybe you should pick a place with no crowds next time!’

  Frank laughed. He had a perfect place all mapped out i
n his mind. But he didn’t think he ought to tell her where that was just yet.

  Chapter Ten

  At seven in the morning, the day after the Coronation, Rosie was just unlocking the outer door which led to the day room and dormitories on the first floor, when Matron came huffing and puffing up the stairs. She had her special tight-lipped expression on her face which Rosie had come to know always meant trouble.

  Rosie was still puzzling over the unexpected sour note the day before had ended on. She hoped Matron’s appearance now wasn’t connected.

  Mr Cook had got Donald and Rosie back to Carrington Hall at around eight-thirty. She said goodbye to them in the hall, leaving Mr Cook to hand over his son to Matron and to explain how he got the cut on his forehead, and went straight off to find Linda, Mary and Maureen to share out the cake and tell them all her news.

  All three girls were in the downstairs staff sitting-room listening to the wireless, the small room thick with cigarette smoke. Rosie was so excited that she didn’t notice the other girls’ coolness towards her immediately. She sat down in a spare chair and rattled out the tale about Donald getting lost. It was only when none of the girls laughed or asked any questions that she realized something was badly wrong.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, looking from one to the other, suddenly chilled. ‘Has something happened while I’ve been out, or are you cross with me?’

  The furtive glances they exchanged with one another seemed to confirm it was the latter.

  ‘But what have I done?’ Rosie asked in bewilderment. ‘Come on, tell me.’

  Linda, who was never one to hedge an issue, spoke first. ‘If you must know, it’s you getting all this special treatment,’ she said bluntly. ‘I’ve never ‘ad much time for Donald. So I wouldn’t ‘ave expected ‘is folks to ask me, but today was supposed to be my day off. I could’a gone ‘ome to me mum’s to join in their street party. But I was bleedin’ well told I gotta ‘ave Friday off instead. That ain’t bloody fair.’