A Daughter's Duty (17 page)

Here Brian found her as he returned from a brisk walk through what seemed to be an old orchard and beyond on the moor. He had been ready to carry on until he came to the village. Maybe he could catch a bus or something, find his way home.

But that impulse had soon passed. After all, he was probably making something out of nothing. He had no real reason to believe there was anything between Marina and her cousin’s new husband. Just the way she had looked at the man … and that was probably the champagne. He owed it to her to stay, he wanted to stay. Oh, God, he thought, jealousy was the very devil.

‘Marina? Marina, love? What is the matter, for goodness’ sake?’

‘Nothing. Well … I thought you’d gone.’

‘Of course I hadn’t. I wouldn’t leave you here to go to the dance on your own, would I? Too many other chaps about. You might get snatched away from me and I’m not having that.’

She looked up at him and smiled. He put his arms around her and held her to him. She was trembling.

‘Let’s go for a walk together, Brian,’ she said. ‘I think I just had too much champagne, I need to walk it off.’

‘You should have listened to me, pet, shouldn’t you?’ Their arms around each other, they strolled through the orchard.

‘We’ll miss the bride and groom going off,’ he said as, round the corner, they saw the best man and a few of his companions attaching tin cans and old boots to a car.

‘I don’t care,’ said Marina. And found that she meant it.

‘What was the wedding like, then?’ asked Rose, and Marina looked at her. Rose was not herself, Marina thought anxiously. She spoke jerkily, not making eye contact, as if she were simply making conversation, saying something, anything.

They had walked up to their favourite spot on the moor and were seated under the overhanging rock, sheltered from the ever-present wind. Marina had at first demurred when her friend had suggested they should go up there. After all, Rose’s dad was just at the Club, it being Sunday afternoon, and could be home at any time.

‘I don’t care,’ she had said as she banged the door to behind them and set off into the clean, cold air. The children were reciting the Lord’s Prayer as they passed the Methodist Sunday School and a little further on the Anglican vicar was standing at the church door shaking hands with his flock as they came out of morning service. Looking back as they climbed the bank away from the village they could see the smoke from all the chimney pots rising in a straight line to the pale blue sky as ovens were heated ready to take the Sunday joint.

Marina glanced surreptitiously at her friend. Rose seemed so calm, unnaturally so. She didn’t seem to care that she also should have been preparing the dinner for her dad when he came out of the Club. She had plucked a dry, brittle stalk of grass and was breaking tiny pieces from it almost as though she didn’t realise she was doing it.

‘The wedding?’ Marina remembered Rose’s question. ‘Oh, you know, it went like all weddings do. The hotel was nice, though, very posh.’ She wasn’t ready to discuss the wedding, not yet. Her mind shied away from it.

Rose nodded, not really interested. She hadn’t even heard the reply.

‘What is it, Rose?’ Marina asked abruptly. ‘Come on, tell me. I know there’s something, you’re different today somehow.’ Rose dropped the grass on the ground and straightened her shoulders as though facing up to something. Her voice, perhaps sharpened by her state of mind, came out aggressively.

‘I’ve fallen wrong.’ The words hung on the air. Rose could hear her own voice saying them but they didn’t sound real.

‘What?’ Marina was sure she’d misheard.

‘I’m going to have a baby.’

‘Are you sure? I mean … well, you can’t be, you never go out with anybody. Oh!’ Light dawned on Marina. ‘Have you been meeting Jeff on the quiet and never told me?’

‘No.’ Rose shook her head. She began playing with her skirt, pleating it and smoothing it, over and over again, with quick, nervous fingers.

‘Why, then you must be mistaken. You can’t be. What was it – as immaculate conception?’ Marina grinned at Rose, trying to jolly her out of her strange mood. She must be going a bit doolally with being on her own in that blooming house so much, that was it. She had a sudden frightful thought herself. By, what if she had got pregnant when she was with Charlie? It didn’t bear thinking about.

‘I’m not, I’ve been to the doctor. I’m expecting, I tell you, I’m four months on.’

‘Rose!’ Marina was jolted out of herself to the point where she was almost speechless.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ said her friend, not sounding distraught, no emotion at all in her voice now that she had told someone at last.

‘Well.’ Marina found her tongue. ‘You’ll have to marry Jeff, won’t you? Never mind what your dad says.’

‘It’s not his baby.’

Marina started. ‘Well, whose is it?’

Rose got to her feet and walked off towards the path. After a moment Marina followed her. ‘Wait a minute, where are you going?’

‘Up to the top of that rock,’ Rose replied.

‘Whatever for?’ But realisation dawned even as Marina spoke. ‘You’re not going to throw yourself off? You’re not trying to kill yourself? Rose!’

She stopped and looked squarely at Marina. ‘No, I won’t kill myself. If I did, who would protect Mary from him? It’s not high enough to kill me anyway, but it might get rid of the baby.’ She began to climb the grassy slope at the back of the rock.

‘Stop it! Behave yourself, Rose, you’re talking like a loony. I don’t know what you’re on about!’ In the urgency of trying to stop Rose, the bit about protecting Mary didn’t register on Marina properly. She scrambled after her friend and managed to grab hold of Rose and force her to a halt, though in the ensuing struggle they both fell on the steep ground and rolled over a couple of times, almost to the bottom. A grouse flew up in startled flight right by their feet; the wind blew remorselessly. The girls lay on their backs, panting. Marina was the first to get to her feet. She took hold of Rose’s forearm and hauled her upright too.

‘Come on, you’re shivering,’ she said, and Rose went with her docilely enough, the fight knocked out of her for the moment. They returned to the shelter of the little dell.

‘Now then, madam,’ said Marina, and all of a sudden she sounded exactly like Kate. ‘I want the whole story.’

‘You won’t want to know me if I tell you.’

‘Don’t talk so daft, it can’t be that bad. Howay, out with it.’

Rose looked away from Marina into the middle distance where there was a stand of trees, grown lopsided by the force of the prevalent winds. Well, she thought, I have to tell someone and Marina might believe me when some folk won’t.

‘Do you remember, years ago, when we were about eleven? We were walking to school with June Simpson and that girl passed us, the one that used to live on the farm up the road?’

‘Now how would I remember one single day out of all the days we walked to school?’

‘Yes. But June Simpson said, if you remember, “That girl’s da is her granda”.’

Marina’s brow creased in puzzlement then cleared as the memory returned in a flash. ‘Oh, yes! And I said June Simpson wasn’t talking sense. We didn’t know what she meant, did we?’

‘I knew. And it frightened me. That June Simpson always knew too much about other folk.’

‘But what has that to do … Rose Sharpe, you don’t mean …’ Suddenly the hints and innuendoes about Alf Sharpe which periodically went around the village came back to Marina. Bits of gossip, not actually saying anything outright, things she’d discounted as malicious rubbish. ‘Do you mean what I think you mean?’

Rose looked down at the ground, her face flushed a dull brick red. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘And the baby? The baby’s father is … no, it can’t be true!’

‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me.’ Rose stared at the ground, pale now.

‘Oh, yes, I do, Rose,’ Marina answered. She couldn’t bear to see such misery in her friend’s face. Impulsively she put an arm around her, shocked to feel how bird-thin she was. Dear God, Rose was skinny as a TB victim. ‘I’m sorry, of course I believe you. You’re my friend, aren’t you?’

Rose began to sob. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, Marina, I don’t! I thought if I threw myself off the rock I would get rid of it. I thought if I hurt myself and you were here you would look after me. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought you into it.’

‘Rubbish! But I don’t think it would have worked, and anyway you might have broken your neck, man.’ Marina paused for a minute, horrified by what might have happened, what she might have had to do if Rose had succeeded in her plan. Poor lass, she must be out of her mind with it all. That rotten excuse for a father! But why had Rose let it happen, especially as she grew older? Marina stopped herself from asking.

She sat holding Rose, rocking her gently as Kate had done with her when she was younger and had hurt herself or was full of some childhood misery.

‘You have to get away,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t go when the twins went.’

‘I had to stay otherwise – well, Mary –’

‘No!’ So that was why. My God! ‘Is that what you meant about protecting the bairn? Rose, no, he wouldn’t … A little lass like Mary. No!’ A new world was opening up for Marina, a dark, horrible world she could barely believe existed. Yet here was Rose to prove it did: all the mystifying changes in her over the years, her dad’s attitude to her friends, and especially to boys. She’d thought Alf Sharpe was being protective, albeit obsessively so, when all the time it had been him from whom Rose needed protection.

‘Rose, no matter what, you have to go now. Surely you can see that? It’s all going to come out anyway if you stay.’

‘He’ll bring the twins home, he’s said he will, and he’s their legal guardian. How can I risk that?’

‘No, he won’t, Rose. Can’t you see? You can threaten him with the law.’ That was Marina, always going straight to the heart of the situation, always jumping straight to the obvious remedy. And this time she was probably right.

‘But everyone would know –’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Rose, everyone will know if you stay. Don’t be so daft!’ In her agitation, Marina jumped up and strode about the fell, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. ‘Listen, I tell you what. We’ll go back now. Your dad won’t be in for an hour or two yet, I’ll bet. Get your things and I’ll go with you to Shotton, how’s that? You tell your Aunt Elsie, I’ll back you up.’

‘She didn’t believe me, you know, when I tried to tell her before.’ Rose was doubtful.

‘Did she not? The stupid cow! Everyone knows you don’t tell lies. Well, she’ll believe you now, I promise you she will. I’ll drum it into her.’

‘I’ll have to tell him.’

‘Leave him a note then. Tell the truth. He won’t dare follow you.’

Something about Marina’s certainty was beginning to make Rose think her friend could be right. Slowly, she nodded her head. They linked arms and walked down the path. Marina was a tower of strength to Rose. She had to be, couldn’t let her change her mind now.

Back at the yard gate, Rose turned to Marina. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘it’s good of you to offer but I think I’d best go on my own. Aunt Elsie won’t thank me for bringing in someone outside the family, d’you see? She’d be mortified. Even worse than she’s going to be now.’

‘You sure? Look, you’re going to go, aren’t you? Well, I’ll go to the bus with you.’ Just in case Rose got cold feet, she told herself.

But Rose packed her things, throwing her clothes higgledy-piggledy into a cheap cardboard case, the only one in the house. ‘I’m ready,’ she said. Now she couldn’t wait. Her nerves were screaming and she wanted to scream with them:
Let’s go! Let’s go!
He could come home any minute, there was no telling.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, do something with your hair first,’ Marina said, looking her up and down. ‘And look, you’ve got your coatbelt twisted. The bus doesn’t go till one o’clock anyway.’ It was a quarter to the hour. She fiddled with Rose’s belt, waited while she combed her hair.

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Rose at the last second and found a scrap of paper in the press and wrote a note: ‘
Gone to Aunt Elsie’s.
’ That was all. Her heart beat painfully in her chest so that she felt it would burst.

‘I know I said leave a note but why bother? He doesn’t deserve it,’ said Marina. Rose shrugged. Within ten minutes of entering the house, they were on their way to the bus stop. As it chugged up the bank towards them, the two girls hugged each other.

‘You’ll write?’ Marina felt like crying now the moment of parting had come.

‘Of course. And you’ll come to see me later, in a week or two?’ The conductor helped Rose on with the case.

‘A bit late to be going on a holiday, isn’t it, love? Blackpool, is it?’

Rose mumbled something in reply, managed a smile. She found a seat near the front. The bus was half-empty, it being a Sunday. Marina was fluttering her handkerchief outside as the driver set off, Rose too full of suppressed emotion to wave back.

‘You look like death warmed up, lass!’ Aunt Elsie exclaimed after she’d greeted Rose. ‘Come on in and I’ll heat you some dinner up, we’ve had ours.’ She opened the door wide for Rose to bring in the suitcase, dripping wet it was now and looking in imminent danger of falling to bits. The day had darkened with a sudden autumn storm. On the way from the bus stop at the Throstle’s Nest, on the edge of the village, the rain had sheeted down. Everything about Rose was soaked.

Elsie eyed the case but said nothing about it. ‘If I’d known you were coming I would have kept the twins in. They’ve gone to a party, one of their friends has a birthday today. Now come on, get those wet things off and dry yourself in front of the fire, you’re shivering like a jelly.’ She paused and looked sideways at her niece. ‘There’s nowt the matter at home, is there? Alf’s all right, I mean?’

‘He’s OK.’

Rose stripped off her things and nothing was said for a while as Elsie bustled about putting a plate of dinner to warm in the oven, pushing the kettle on to the glowing fire, spooning tea into the brown betty teapot. It was only when Rose was once again in dry clothes with warmth seeping back into her bones and was seated at the table before the steaming food that her aunt poured herself a cup of tea and sat down opposite her.