Rosie Read online

  Perhaps it was a premonition that Heather would run away too that turned Rosie into a little mother. Once she asked Heather if she would take her and Alan if she left, but the girl just looked blankly at her.

  ‘ ’Ow can I go?’ she said, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I ain’t got nowhere to go to, Rosie, and I sure as ‘ell ain’t got no money.’

  Alan was one, Rosie eleven when her feelings of dislike for her older brothers turned to hatred. She was sent home from school early one afternoon in February because snow was expected. Walking in the back door she found baby Alan screaming his head off in his pram, yet even above that noise she heard something else from upstairs. A banging, thumping sound that chilled her, and before she lifted Alan from the pram she crept up the stairs to investigate.

  What she saw was so shocking she almost wet herself, as she shrunk back against the wall on the landing out of sight. The mirror on the wardrobe in her dad’s bedroom reflected back what was going on in there. Twenty-year-old Seth was fully dressed in his dirty work clothes, Heather was on all fours on the bed, her skirt tossed over her back, held there by Seth, his fingers digging into her flesh. He was mounting her from the rear, just like the bull did out in the fields. Seth was grimacing and grunting, Heather was crying, a pitiful heartbroken cry that cut through Rosie like a knife.

  Worse still, Norman was standing there beside the bed watching. He was on his National Service then, and had come home on a forty-eight-hour pass the day before, still in uniform. His flies were unbuttoned, he was rubbing himself and urging his older brother to hurry so he could take over.

  Rosie had tried hard to blank that memory from her mind, along with the guilt that she didn’t try to do something to stop it. But she’d been so shocked, so appalled that she could do nothing but creep back down the stairs to comfort her screaming baby brother.

  She wanted to tell her father, but she was too afraid of what Seth might do to her or Alan in retaliation. She didn’t even dare tell Heather that she had been a witness.

  It was only when Heather had run away a year later that Rosie began to suspect her own mother hadn’t been killed in an air raid after all, but had fled for the same reasons as Heather, because she could no longer bear the cruelty of Cole and his boys.

  She fully understood why both women had left. She didn’t blame either of them for deserting her, but one thing troubled her deeply. Why did Heather leave Alan behind? Rosie had got home from school to find him still strapped in his pram down in the orchard, screaming fit to bust because he was wet and hungry.

  There were good enough reasons to explain why Rosie’s own mother had left her behind. She was six after all and her father’s pet. But Heather knew Cole didn’t love Alan. How could she have left him to the mercy of three men whom she knew to be dangerous and without the slightest interest in his well-being?

  Seth had once viciously remarked that Heather was a tart, that she had men in the cottage all the time during the day, and left Alan behind because she’d gone off with a man who didn’t want the kid around. But Rosie never believed it. Heather might have been a little simple, but she had loved her baby.

  For a long time after she went Rosie fully expected her to reappear one day to collect Alan when the men were out, but she never did.

  So Alan had become, to all intents and purposes, Rosie’s child. Cole paid a couple of shillings a week to someone in the village to mind him while she was at school, he paid for clothes and shoes, albeit begrudgingly. But he took no interest in the small boy and left everything else, including protecting him from the older boys, to Rosie.

  Later, downstairs, Rosie laid a blanket on the kitchen table, spread a sheet over it and plugged the iron into the overhanging light. The electricity had only been put in last year and she still thought it was a miracle. It was good to have running water in the kitchen too, but that had been here for two years now, and she’d got used to that. She dampened down her brothers’ shirts and rolled them up tightly while she waited for the iron to get hot, but her mind wandered on to what was going on in the Crown and if Thomas was in there too.

  Thomas was in the Crown, tucked into a corner with his second pint of cloudy rough cider. Sam used to talk about this cider all the time in the camp, and although Thomas wasn’t wild about the taste, he felt he owed it to Sam to sup at least three before the night was out.

  He’d knocked on the door of the pub earlier in the afternoon after he’d left Rosie and asked if they had a room. Mrs Hilda Colbeck the landlady had been very wary at first. She said she didn’t usually bother with paying guests, unless they would be staying a full week, but she relented when Thomas admitted he couldn’t walk much further. It seemed she had a soft spot for wounded ex-servicemen.

  Over a robust dinner of steak and kidney pudding with both Colbecks, Hilda had quizzed him as to why he was in Somerset. Thomas thought it judicious to keep quiet for now about Heather and told them about his friend Sam Gurney and how he’d planned to look around the area before moving on to search for his family in nearby Henton.

  With his leg feeling a little easier, and a large dinner inside him, Thomas was now watching and listening to Cole Parker and his sons who’d arrived at about seven-thirty.

  He didn’t need to wait for someone to greet them by name to know who the three men were; the moment they swaggered through the door he guessed. All shared the same shiny black hair, dark hooded eyes and swarthy skin. A handsome trio, taller, with wider shoulders than any other man in the bar and a certain dominance that told him they saw themselves as the lords of this particular manor.

  Yet however they saw themselves Thomas knew immediately they weren’t popular. The temperature seemed to drop a few degrees as they came in; the smiles of greeting looked strained. No one actually met their eyes.

  The bar was full, but then it was quite small, with a low beamed ceiling and an inglenook fireplace which took up enough room for half a dozen more drinkers. Aside from Hilda, behind the bar, there were no women. Most of the men were farm workers, still in their rough working clothes with muck on their boots, and they all had the same rolling Somerset accent. But everyone paled into insignificance next to the Parkers.

  The two boys were so similar they could easily pass as twins, an inch or so taller than their father and far leaner, their complexions smooth and tanned a golden brown. But though the boys had youth on their side, still perfect teeth and firm bodies, their features were bland compared with Cole’s. The boys had thin lips and narrow noses; Cole’s mouth was wide, fleshy and sensual, and his nose was broad. He smiled easily, his laugh was deep and throaty, belying the bad temper Rosie had hinted at. In fact if she hadn’t warned Thomas her father wouldn’t be receptive to questions about Heather, he would have had no compunction at approaching the man right now.

  But the boys were different. They didn’t seem to hold conversations as such, but greeted other men with the kind of sarcastic banter that suggested they were incapable of real friendship, and they looked around them constantly to check the effect they were having on everyone. Thomas smiled to himself at this. He’d met so many men like these during his time in the army. Strutting, dim-witted bully boys who, if you could separate them from their sidekicks and give them a dose of their own medicine, would turn into snivelling runts.

  ‘Come on, Stan, get the pints in. It’s your shout,’ one of the boys called out suddenly. Thomas guessed this must be Seth and the object of his attention was a very small man in a Norfolk jacket who looked distinctly nervous.

  There was a sudden hush. The little man had only come in to the bar in the last fifteen minutes and he certainly hadn’t been stood a drink by any of the Parkers.

  ‘I can’t tonight,’ the man replied, licking his lips nervously and clutching his pint mug in front of him. ‘I’ve no money on me. I only came in for a quick one.’

  Seth grinned. ‘Well, let’s make it quicker for you then,’ he said and with that grabbed the man’s hair with one hand, tilting
his head back, and seizing the pint from Stan’s hand began to pour it into the little man’s open mouth.

  There was a titter of uncomfortable laughter, several men turned their heads away, but no one lifted a finger to stop it. Stan’s arms flayed wildly, he was choking and spluttering, beer running all down his jacket.

  Thomas started to get up out of instinct, but Hilda shot him a warning glance from across the bar.

  ‘Now then, Seth,’ she said reprovingly. ‘Stop that this minute. Thass no way to behave.’

  Thomas noted from the faces of all the other customers that they were in total agreement with Hilda, but no one attempted to back her up.

  Seth ignored Hilda and continued to pour the beer in the man’s mouth.

  It was Cole who stopped it. He laid one hand on his son’s forearm. ‘Enough, son,’ he said quietly.

  Stan backed away, still spluttering, reached for the door latch and was off without a word. Thomas sunk back into his seat and pretended to look at an old photograph on the wall beside him. He guessed Seth would be looking around, hoping to challenge anyone unwise enough to pass comment.

  By closing time, Thomas had the Parkers’ full measure. All three men had consumed at least eight pints of cider each and their voices became louder with each one. They bragged constantly, about horses they’d backed, women who fancied them, deals they’d done. He heard they were off to London next week collecting up Anderson shelters. Apparently they could get as much as ten pounds for each one they dug up, along with often getting the owner to pay them on top for disposing of it for them. Seth made a crack about knocking off lonely housewives too, while Norman said something about giving old ladies a couple of bob for old furniture and silver.

  As the bar closed on the last customer and Thomas got up to go to his room he felt sickened that his young sister had lived in a house for four years with such creatures. They seemed worse than animals to him. Women were there to be used and abused, as they conned, lied and cheated their way through life. He wondered too how Rosie had managed to turn out so nicely, and also how safe she was in the company of those two brothers.

  ‘Weren’t you lonely stuck in that corner alone?’ Hilda asked him as she followed him up the stairs. ‘You should have sat at the bar. We’re a friendly bunch really.’

  ‘I was happy enough watching and listening,’ he replied. ‘Those three dark men particularly. They were characters!’

  She stopped at the top of the narrow staircase and turned to look at Thomas, her narrow, bony face full of contempt. ‘Just between you and me,’ she said, ‘if I had my way they’d never step over the threshold here again. Blaggards the three of them, they’d sell their own grandmother for tuppence. But Harold’s scared of ‘em.’

  ‘Don’t cut that bread so thin,’ Cole snapped at Rosie the next morning. He was washing at the kitchen sink, but he must have been watching her in the mirror. ‘Those sandwiches are for men, not a bloody garden party. Seth! Norman! Get down here, you lazy buggers!’ he roared up the stairs.

  It was half past six. Rosie had been up for an hour already. She’d lit the stove, collected up eight new-laid eggs from the hens, and three huge fried breakfasts were waiting in the oven, the kettle nearly boiling for tea.

  Cole was so big he blocked out all light from the kitchen window. He wore the same dirty grey trousers he wore every working day, his braces hanging down at the sides as he washed his armpits. People said he was a fine-looking man, and at times when he was dressed in his Sunday suit Rosie agreed with them; but not in the early mornings, with thick black stubble covering his entire lower face and his hairy paunch hanging over his trousers.

  Rosie silently put the three plates of breakfast on the table as Seth and Norman came into the kitchen, wearing just their trousers.

  ‘D’you want a flask too?’ she asked her father. He had put on his clean shirt, combed his hair and his braces were back on his shoulders. She was nervous now her brothers were in the room. She was never comfortable in their presence any more. The girls in the village might find them handsome, but she didn’t.

  Seth stunk of urine, and that meant he had wet the bed again. There was a strong smell of stale sweat too, and it sickened her to think they would probably put the clean shirts she’d just ironed over their unwashed bodies. Neither of them ever cleaned their nails, or brushed their teeth. Cole might have a vicious temper but at least he was fastidious.

  ‘Don’t you go getting no lads in here today while we’re gone,’ Seth said. ‘Or we’ll cut off their balls when we get back.’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ Cole scowled at his eldest son. ‘Our Rosie’s got more sense than that. And you, lad, can wash yerself proper before we leave. You stink worse than pig shit.’

  Rosie slipped silently out the door and off up the stairs at that comment, not even waiting for Cole’s answer about a flask. When Seth was reprimanded by his father, he usually took it out on someone. She had no intention of being the target.

  She gagged as she went in to see Alan. As she expected Seth had wet his bed and the smell of ammonia was disgusting. He never apologized, much less stripped the sheets. But then he was an animal in every way. He often vomited on the floor and left it for her to find, just as he would sometimes do more than just pee in the chamber pot and leave that too. She suspected if she wasn’t there to change the sheets and clean up after him, he’d just go on wallowing in it like a pig.

  As she pulled off the sheets, Alan woke.

  ‘Shush,’ she whispered, putting a finger up to her lips. ‘Stay there till they’ve gone out, then we’ll have our breakfast together.’

  Ten minutes later Rosie heard her father bellow out her name. She ran down the stairs. ‘I was just making the beds. Are you going now?’

  Cole smiled at her and held out a half-crown.

  ‘Well be at the auction all day, and we won’t be back until late, so we’ll get sommat to eat there,’ he said. ‘It’s a hot ‘un again, so after you’ve done the chores, take a walk down to the village and get yourself an ice-cream.’

  The unexpected treat and consideration pleased Rosie. On impulse she ran down the last few stairs to hug him. Fortunately Seth and Norman had gone outside to the pickup truck. Cole was never as warm when they were in earshot.

  ‘You’re a good ‘un,’ he said, hugging her back. ‘Now don’t you go forgetting to shut the hens up this evening, there’s foxes about. And get that lazy little bugger up, he should be helping you at his age, not lying abed.’

  She followed her father outside to wave him off. It was a beautiful morning, a light haze hanging over the moors. She suddenly felt very happy. With the men out till late and no evening meal to prepare, it would be like a holiday.

  *

  Rosie held Alan’s hand as they walked along the lane to the village school. It was the best part of the day for her, a chance to see a few people, even if no one stopped to speak. But today as Cole had given her half a crown, she could buy a newspaper and Mrs Willis the shopkeeper might have a few old magazines for her.

  She saw Thomas long before she reached the Crown. He was sitting outside on the bench as if he was waiting for the bus into Bridgwater. The bus didn’t arrive until half past nine, so the only reason he could be there now was to wait for her to pass by on the way to school.

  Suddenly she was glad that she’d put on her better dress – the blue and white striped one she’d ironed last night.

  Keeping a tight hold on Alan’s hand she walked on, willing Thomas not to draw attention to them by calling out to her. When he opened a newspaper in front of him she knew he had spotted her, but he merely nodded and then appeared to be reading.

  Her heart thumped so loudly as she walked right past him, she was sure he’d be able to hear it, and she covered her confusion by pointing out a couple of white doves sitting on the roof of the Crown to Alan, pausing just long enough so Thomas could take a good look at the small boy. She glanced towards the man, putting one finger to her lips an
d, understanding, Thomas winked back at her.

  Thomas felt a surge of unexpected emotion when he looked at Alan. It was like looking back at himself as a small boy. The same dark brown eyes, which his mother had always said were too big for his face, the knobbly, much scarred knees and the pale, thin face. Alan’s hair was more red than blond though, and he looked nervy which Thomas had never been.

  Late last night Hilda had given him the full nine yards on Cole Parker, his sons and his disappearing women. It was alarming stuff, even taking exaggeration and spiteful gossip into account. Thomas had woken this morning after a disturbed night knowing this was one situation he couldn’t walk away from.

  It had dawned on him during the night that the word ‘avoidance’ summed up what was different about him now, compared to how he’d been before capture by the Japs. Once he took everything head-on. Trouble was faced with courage and belief in himself. If a mate got in a fight he’d join in too, right or wrong. He would stand against injustice, even at risk of losing his own liberty; running or avoidance to him was rank cowardice. When he first arrived in the camp in Burma, even after a gruelling march with little food or water, he still believed it was his duty to his country to fight the Japs every step of the way.

  He was flogged twice in the first two months for refusing to obey the guards’ orders, left in the hot sun with his back in ribbons until he thought he heard the clank of the Pearly Gates. But gradually the futility of rebellion sunk in. He saw so many good men die because of stubborn pride or sheer cussedness. Captain Gregson allowed himself to be strapped to a bamboo frame and left to die slowly and horribly in the boiling sun rather than apologize for insulting a Japanese officer. Another man was whipped to death when admitting he had a wireless hidden in his hut would have saved him. The Japs found the wireless anyway, and punished every man in the hut. Still more men died for far less noble reasons, just disease and slow starvation.