‘Oh, Hughie.’ She put out her hand with the intention of touching his cheek, but before it reached him he had risen to his feet. ‘Better be making a move,’ he said; ‘I’ll need all the time I’ve got to get to that airport, not being Stirling Moss.’ He turned away laughing. Then from the door he nodded to her. ‘All right?’
‘Yes, Hughie, I’m all right.’
Starting up the car once more he gulped in great draughts of air. It had all been easier that he expected. For he had a horror on him of someone stopping them and saying to her, I’m sorry to hear about your ma, Rosie. It would be just like the thing, he thought, if it happened almost at the last minute. He felt easier now she was in the caravan.
He was in the bank less than ten minutes and he was smiling wryly to himself as he emerged. How smoothly the wheels of life ran when you had a little oil to grease them with. A special messenger would be at Dennis’ at one o’clock. Dennis had only the morning off from school so he would be home by then, but if he wasn’t home the messenger would return again at half-past four; the letter had to be delivered personally.
As he stepped briskly across the pavement to the car and caravan he knew that he wouldn’t be able to relax or get rid of this jittery feeling until they were out of the town, because he knew that his future life, and that of Rosie’s, depended on her not knowing that Hannah was dead.
He had gone some distance when he stopped the car again, and getting out and opening the caravan door, he looked towards her, where half-risen, she was leaning on her elbow. ‘We’re nearly out of the town,’ he said, ‘but there will be Craig Hill to go up and that’s pretty steep; it might be a bit frightening for you if you found yourself up on end. Would you like to come in the car again?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Hastily she pulled on her boots and he helped her out of the caravan and into the car.
‘All right now?’ he asked as he started up. ‘Comfortable?’
‘Yes, very comfortable.’
‘You warm enough?’
‘Yes, it’s lovely, I can feel the hot air around my feet.’
‘Yes, the heating’s good. By! The cars these days have everything.’ He spoke as if he had owned cars that hadn’t quite everything. ‘Would you like the wireless on?’
‘Not unless you want it, Hughie.’
‘No, I don’t want it. Well now, there’s only one more set of traffic lights and we’ll be away.’
The traffic lights were against them. In front of them was a small van. It was somewhat to the left of Hughie’s bonnet, obscuring the view and the traffic coming from Dean Road. But he wasn’t concerned with the passing traffic, he looked to where his route lay straight across the road and up the hill. That was, until he saw Rosie lift her right hand reverently to her brow and a chill passed over him that brought with it a sickening dread as he watched her making the sign of the cross. The hood turned towards him and from the folds of it she whispered, ‘It’s a funeral.’ He stared back almost mesmerised into her sad, distorted face; he knew the words she would be saying to herself: ‘May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.’ He remembered vividly scenes, right back down the years, of Hannah stopping whenever she saw a funeral and blessing herself and repeating the words, and the children with her following suit.
A fear born of premonition paralysed him until he found himself leaning forward and fiddling with a switch on the dashboard of the car. And now his voice almost croaked as he said, ‘Rosie, I wonder if you’d mind getting down and looking just under your seat—there’s a tool tray there. Would you pull it out and get me a screwdriver?’
‘Yes, Hughie, yes.’
The motor-drawn hearse passed slowly before the van and came into view, and as he looked at the coffin under its canopy of flowers his whole stomach seemed to turn a somersault. It was as if his bowels had run to water. He knew who lay there before the first car came into sight. In his mind he saw her struggling to get out and at him. He felt sick, sick enough to want to vomit.
In the first car he made out the black-coated figures of Jimmy and Broderick and Arthur, and…
‘Is this it, Hughie?’
He jerked in his seat as he looked at the screwdriver in Rosie’s extended hand.
‘No…no, no, Rosie; it’s…it’s a smaller one than that.’
As she bent her head he lifted his again. A second car had passed, and now in the third one, there was John, and Betty, and a man he vaguely recognised as Michael from Cornwall.
He had just caught sight of Dennis and Florence in the next car when Rosie said, ‘There isn’t a small one, Hughie.’
‘Hand me the tray up, will you, Rosie?’ He could not keep his voice steady.
As she handed him the tray he exclaimed on a deep tired note, ‘Oh bust! The lights are changing. Just leave it, I’ll do it when we get to the top.’ He fumbled at the gears, grating them before he got the car moving again. He had the urge now to go into top gear and race up the hill and out of the town. His whole body was trembling. God! If it hadn’t been for that van in front, she must have seen them. There was somebody, somewhere, he thought, on his side. For that to happen at the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour and yet not come off, assuredly there was somebody on his side.
When they reached the top of Craig Hill he was glad enough of the excuse to stop, and as he examined the knob of the screen wiper he said, ‘I think it’ll do, it only wanted a twist.’
When she made no remark he looked towards her, but she was looking out of the window.
From the top of Craig Hill there was a full view of Fellburn. The town lay between two hills. The other rising on the far side was the famous Brampton Hill, with its long gardens reaching down to the river. Away in the distance, towards the head of the valley, were the shafts of the two dominating pits, and significantly separating them a sloping stretch of ground, which when clear of snow was a landmark which still remained white…it was Fellburn Cemetery. As Hughie stared towards it he saw nearing it a thin black line sharply depicted against the snow. It was weird, weird. It was as if she was watching him to the very end. As he hastily went to start the engine again Rosie’s hand came on his, and it caused him to jerk his head towards her. ‘We’re leaving Fellburn, Hughie,’ she said.
‘Yes, we’re leaving Fellburn, Rosie.’ And the quicker the better, he added to himself.
‘I don’t ever want to see it again, Hughie…Not that it’s ever done anything to me, but I just don’t want to see it again.’ She didn’t say to him, I don’t ever want to come home again, I don’t ever want to see me ma again. These were sentiments that couldn’t be put into words. You just covered them up with the name of a town.
‘Well, you won’t ever see it again if you don’t want to, Rosie.’
Her hood had slipped back and was showing her hair, bright and unspoilt above the distortion of her face. As Hughie’s eyes lifted to it, she turned her face slightly to the side. ‘There’s something I’d like to tell you before we leave, Hughie,’ she said. ‘Before we start out so to speak.’
‘Aw now,’ he put in quickly, ‘there’s no need to tell me anything more, Rosie. Don’t distress yourself further…please. I don’t want to know…’
‘…Not that I would have come away with you even before this happened?’ She touched her cheek with her fingers.
‘Rosie!’ He turned slowly but fully round in his seat. ‘Do you mean that?’
‘Yes, yes. That’s…that’s why I talked to you the other night. I didn’t know why I wanted to tell you until after I had told you, and then coming…coming on top of the London business I couldn’t trust myself or my feelings. I thought I wasn’t the capable judge of what I wanted. And…and I also want you to know I would have felt the same if…if you hadn’t come into the money…Believe me on that above all things, Hughie.’
‘Aw, Rosie.’ He lifted her hands and pulled them inside his open greatcoat; then bending slowly forward he let his lips touch hers fo
r the first time. It was a touch without pressure and had the gentleness of a salve on her tight painful skin. Yet it had the power to break through the dead weight on her mind, shattering it, leaving her feeling light and faint with an overwhelming sense of relief, and the touch seemed to exhilarate him. The cloak of meekness he had worn for years disintegrated. His eyes shining, he looked at her a moment longer; then swiftly grabbing the wheel he put in the clutch and swung the car into the middle of the road. But no sooner had he done this when a terrific blast of a horn made him pull the wheel sharply to the left again. As a huge lorry passed him and a big head came into his view, shouting, ‘You askin’ for trouble, mate?’ all he could do was stop the car yet once again.
And now, leaning over the wheel, his hands gripping the top of it, his voice trembling he said, ‘I never looked in the mirror.’ He glanced swiftly towards Rosie to see what her reactions were to his obviously bad driving, and when he saw her actually attempting to laugh his body jerked with a spasm. Then again it came, until, his head going back, he burst into loud body-shaking, relieving mirth. Looking down at her, he gasped, ‘What odds, Rosie, what odds, eh? Let them all shout. It won’t be the last mistake I’ll make before we reach the end of the line. Who do they think they are, anyway? “You asking for trouble, mate?”’ He was mimicking the lorry driver. ‘Yes, I’m asking for trouble, mate. Lead me to it.’
Now, Rosie was really laughing, and it was a painful business, as her hands pressed against her cheeks showed, and she cried, ‘Oh, Hughie! Don’t. Don’t.’
He was still laughing when he gripped the wheel once again and started the car. He felt a god, able to cope with any situation. He could make the woman he loved laugh; even under these circumstances he had made her laugh. He had won. He hadn’t to wait until months ahead. He knew inside for a certainty now he had won, and he cried with the whole of his being, ‘I’ve won, Hannah Massey! I’ve won!’
The End
Hannah Massey Page 24