A Daughter's Duty (18 page)

‘What’s wrong, then?’ she demanded. ‘Come on, out with it!’

‘I’ve left home, Auntie. Can I stay with you for a bit?’ Rose turned her fork in a pile of mashed potato, making a channel as she used to do when she was little, watching the gravy run into it like a miniature river. She didn’t look at her aunt. She was dreading Elsie’s asking the reason; now that moment was near she didn’t think she could tell her. She might not believe her, might send her away. Rose rushed into speech to hold off the moment.

‘I can get a job – there’s clothing factories quite near here. I won’t be a burden, Auntie. I can help you with Michael and Mary, too.’

At the mention of Michael and Mary, Aunt Elsie relaxed. Her expression softened. ‘You miss them, eh? Of course you do. I know I would.’

‘That’s it.’ Rose seized on it as the perfect reason for her coming. It was true, too. ‘I miss them an awful lot. I do, Aunt Elsie.’

‘Aye. They’re little angels, they are. Well, sometimes they’re little demons but there would be something wrong if they weren’t, wouldn’t there?’ She laughed, leaning back in her chair, her delight in having the twins shining out. Then her manner changed. She put her cup down on its saucer and leaned her elbows on the table.

‘But what about your dad? Who’s going to look after him?’

‘I have a right to a life of me own!’ Rose burst out, her lip quivering. ‘He earns enough money, he can afford a housekeeper. I want to be with the kids!’

Aunt Elsie sighed. ‘I know, I know. Don’t think I haven’t seen how unhappy you are. I noticed the last time you were here. You’ve changed, lass, turning into an old woman before your time. And so skinny … you were such a plump, jolly bairn.’

‘Can I stay, Auntie?’

‘We’ll see, we’ll see. Now howay, stop playing with your food, I don’t make a good dinner for it to be wasted.’ She poured a cup of tea for Rose. ‘By the way, I expect you told your dad what you were doing? Did he say it was all right?’

‘I left him a note.’

‘Hmm.’ Aunt Elsie looked sceptical but she held her peace.

Rose felt as if a load had been lifted from her shoulders. Aunt Elsie hadn’t said she could stay but she hadn’t thrown her out either. At the very least it was a breathing space. What she would do when she found out about the baby was another thing.

Later, with Michael and Mary home, the evening passed in seeing to them, giving them supper, getting them ready for bed. In the way of children they didn’t question Rose’s presence, just accepted her with joy, both trying to climb on her knee at once. And afterwards, when Michael and Mary were in bed, the women busied themselves laying out their school things before settling down before the fire to listen to the Light Programme on the wireless.

‘You’ll have to sleep with Mary the night,’ Aunt Elsie said. ‘Tomorrow I’ll seek out the camp bed from the attic. It’ll do until we manage to get a better one.’ And Rose felt a surge of gratitude to her. She was going to be allowed to stay. What would she do without Aunt Elsie? Tomorrow would be soon enough to tell her aunt the truth. Or even perhaps later, when she had found a job, was at least earning her own living.

Then there was Jeff. The thought of him hurt her inside. How could she possibly tell him? Yet how could she not? There was one thing for sure: he would be finished with her altogether when he learned the truth. Of course he would, what lad wouldn’t? She was dirty, used, soiled.

‘A good thing an’ all,’ said Kate when Marina told her that Rose had gone to live with her aunt in Shotton Colliery. ‘Why she didn’t go when the twins went mystifies me.’

Marina gazed at her mother. What did she know? What did the rest of the folk in Jordan realise about Alf Sharpe? All of it. Or if they didn’t know, they had suspected the truth. Everyone but herself. So why hadn’t they done something about it? Marina’s childlike faith in her elders had taken a blow. In the ordinary way it was natural for a girl to stay at home and look after her father if he was on his own, that was what usually happened. She put the question to her mother.

‘Isn’t a girl expected to look after her father if he’s on his own? After all, Rose isn’t the only one in the village.’ She wasn’t, there was one other girl at least in that position, living on the other side of Jordan.

‘Not if the dad’s like Alf Sharpe, they’re not,’ snapped Kate.

‘How?’

‘For goodness’ sake, lass, stop going on! You’ve got eyes in your head, haven’t you?’ And she would say no more.

There was a letter for Rose from Easington on the following Monday.

‘What are you going to do with that?’ asked Kate, scrutinising the envelope. ‘I suppose you have her address?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s all right then, you can send it on.’

Marina had other ideas, though. She was owed a lieu day at work, she would go in tomorrow and ask if she could take the afternoon off at least. Shotton wasn’t far from Durham City, no more than half an hour on the bus, she reckoned. And she couldn’t wait to see how Rose was getting on; if her aunt had believed her and taken her in.

Alf Sharpe took a taxi to Shotton. It cost half a week’s wages and was the highlight of the week for the taxi driver who came out from Bishop Auckland to pick up his passenger. Alf had drunk a bottle of cheap whisky on Sunday afternoon after he came in from the Club already half-cut and found no dinner ready and the fire out. After a few minutes yelling for Rose, he found the note she had left on the kitchen table but which had been brushed to the floor as he walked past.

He had lain for twenty-four hours on the mat before the range, waking up stiff and cold, with a mouth like a cesspit and a black fury inside him that couldn’t wait for slow buses to get him where he wanted to go.

It was a messenger from the manager of the pit who had knocked and knocked and finally woken him, for Alf had missed his shift.

‘Mr Harris wants to know what’s the matter, Mr Sharpe?’ It was a young clerk from the colliery office, trying not to gag at the stench of stale whisky. Alf stood in the doorway, holding the door and swaying slightly.

‘I’m bad. Can you not see I’m bad?’ Indeed he was red-eyed and unshaven and looked like a tramp, thought the boy, who was from a Primitive Methodist teetotal family and shocked to the core. He stepped back from the door out of range of Alf’s breath.

‘Yes, I can, Mr Sharpe, but the manager’ll want to know what’s the matter.’

‘I’ve got the flu,’ he improvised, then, noticing the boy’s instinctive recoil, ‘I’ve taken a drop to ease it, like. Now damn well get out of here, that’s all you need to know.’

‘But Mr Harris’ll want to know when you’re coming back.’

‘When I’m better!’ Alf slammed the door and leaned against it, fighting the waves of nausea which threatened, the deafening pounding in his head. The din receded at last, his stomach settled and he tottered to his chair by the empty grate and lit a cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs so that the cigarette burned down half its length in one drag.

Rose wasn’t going to get away with it, the bitch was his! He would go to Shotton and bring the kids home, the kids or her, he swore he would. He’d told her he would, that night she’d come into the kitchen and offered the deal, and he would do it, she’d better believe it. And Elsie would make her come home. She was besotted with those two brats, would give up anything but them. Even Rose.

That morning, Rose had dressed in her good suit and announced she was off to the Labour Exchange as soon as Michael and Mary had left for school. She felt a rush of optimism. This was the start of a new life. She’d had a good night’s sleep, free from the worry of waiting for
him
to open her bedroom door, and the shadows under her eyes were lessening already.

‘There’s no rush, Rose,’ Aunt Elsie said, ‘give yourself a few days’ holiday, pet. You look as though you could do with it.’ She had the oilcloth cover off the kitchen table and was sorting clothes on the white-scrubbed wood. In the yard, the setpot boiler was just beginning to emit little puffs of steam as the water heated up.

Rose hesitated. Maybe she should stay and help her aunt with the week’s washing. She offered but Aunt Elsie would have none of it.

‘No, no, I didn’t mean that. I can manage fine. No, if you want to go now, that’s all right by me,’ she said. ‘Mind, I’d look in the
Echo
first if I was you. The Sits Vac column.’

‘I did that. There wasn’t anything.’

Rose had more luck at the Labour Exchange. She was there for half an hour and when she came out had a card in her hand for a job at the raincoat factory, Ransome’s, on the newly built industrial estate near the colliery.

‘West Auckland Clothing factory you worked at? Have you a reference?’ The personnel officer looked over his glasses at Rose.

‘No. Well, I left a while back. My mother died and I had to look after the house,’ she replied.

‘I see.’

He glanced at her application form but hesitated for only a minute; he was chronically short of machinists. And he knew Elsie Sharpe, who was a respectable woman.

When Rose came out of Ransome’s, she had a job on the sewing-machine belt, earning two pounds a week basic and more if she was fast enough. The machinists were on piece work.

‘I start tomorrow, Aunt Elsie, making raincoats at Ransome’s,’ she cried as she came in the back door, flushed with success. And stopped dead, the smile wiped from her face when she saw who was standing in front of the fire, his hands folded in front of him, face red and blotched with anger.

‘No, you bloody well don’t,’ said Alf, his voice not raised but harsh with the strength of his rage.

‘Your dad’s here for you,’ said Aunt Elsie, coming out of the pantry, wiping her hands on a tea towel. She looked anxiously from one to the other. ‘Now, Alf, don’t be hard on the lass,’ she said. ‘She missed the bairns, that was what it was.’

‘I’ll not be hard, I’m a reasonable man,’ he replied, not looking at his sister but at Rose. ‘She said she would stay wi’ me, see to my needs, and I let the twins come to you. It was agreed.’

‘I cannot stay any longer, Dad,’ Rose managed to say, though her throat felt as if it was closing up. She was strangling with fear and revulsion. Waves of heat washed over her. For a while, a very short while it had turned out to be, she had thought he wouldn’t have the nerve to follow her in case she told and someone believed her. But that was only a dream, she saw that now.

‘Can you not? Well, then, mebbe the twins can’t stay here any longer either. What do you think of that?’ Rose sat down suddenly, before she fell.

‘Alf! What do you mean? You can’t take them back now, they’ve settled in, they go to school here. Alf, be reasonable, man!’ Elsie paled and screwed up her face in anxiety.

‘Aye. But I’m their father, Elsie. I’m their legal guardian. I’ll take them if I damn well want to.’

‘No, you won’t, Dad,’ Rose said, lifting her chin, the dizziness receding.

Alf nodded. He scratched his stubbly chin and smiled, and somehow his smile looked far worse, Alf smiling looked far more menacing than Alf in a rage.

Rose looked down at the cheap linoleum with which Elsie had covered the cement floor, tracing the abstract pattern of red and blue on brown to where it disappeared under the clippie mat. She tried to gather her resources. She had to win this one, she
had
to.

‘You won’t take the twins,’ she said. Her voice sounded strong and calm in her own ears which was strange because she was quaking inside.

‘No, of course he’s not going to take the twins,’ said her aunt. ‘They’re far better off here. They’ve made friends, they’re happy here. Alf?’ It was a plea.

Her brother looked at her. ‘Pull yourself together, woman,’ he snapped. ‘If you want to keep them, talk to little Rosie here, it’s up to her. Well, Rose?’

‘Aunt Elsie, I’m sorry. I can’t go back, really I cannot.’

‘But why not? He’s your dad, for goodness’ sake. You owe him something, don’t you?’

‘Nothing at all. Nothing but misery,’ declared Rose. She folded her arms in front of her, holding herself; she was as tense as a coiled spring, her mouth dry.

‘What are you talking about?’ Aunt Elsie’s mouth was slack, the question came out in a wail.

‘I think you know what I’m talking about.’

‘I don’t! If you’re talking that filth you said when your poor mam died, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe a word of it! I told meself it was because you were so upset over your mam but if you start saying such things again, I’ll never forgive you, I’m telling you!’

‘Whether you believe it or not, it’s true,’ Rose said and stared grimly at her father. All the times he had threatened her, all the times he had used her, even when her mother was in the house, all the misery she had undergone because of the evil that was her father,
her own flesh and blood
, the hell of it, the thought that it could all happen again with Mary … it all came to a head. She got to her feet and screamed at him, screamed at them both, brother and sister.

‘He wouldn’t leave me alone, not even when Mam was there! He still won’t, can’t you see? I only stayed because he said he would take the twins back. Dear God, Aunt Elsie, can’t you see what would happen to Mary if he did? I thought you loved her.’

She was standing now, legs astride and hands on her hips, her head thrust forward as she shouted at them both, for Elsie Sharpe had run to her brother, both of them braced as though facing an enemy. Alf was panting, fists opening and closing at his sides, Elsie as red-faced and furious as her niece. Then she spoke, or hissed rather, through her teeth.

‘Nothing is going to happen to Mary – nothing, I’m telling you. Nowt will happen because she’s staying here with
me
, isn’t she, Alf? Not that I’m saying anything would happen if she went back with her dad, because it wouldn’t. You’re a filthy-minded little bitch, Rose, and I wouldn’t mind betting you’re not Alf’s bairn at all, if the truth be known! You don’t take after the Sharpes, that’s for sure. I always wondered about your mother –’

‘I wish to heaven I wasn’t his!’ cried Rose. ‘Especially now. Most especially now. I cannot go back, I tell you, I cannot! I’m going to have a baby!’ She raised a finger and pointed it at Alf. ‘
His
baby it is. Ask him. If he denies it, he’s lying in his teeth.’