Yorkshire Rose

by Margaret Pemberton

  She didn’t answer him. She simply stared at, and through Walter, looking down through the long tunnel of the years, seeing in her mind’s eye the big, bullish, domineering father who had once so petted and cossetted her. Her very first memory was of him throwing her high into the air in Crag-Side’s vast, Chinese-papered drawing-room, catching her in his strong, safe arms as she screamed with terrified delight. And now he was dead and he would never see her children; never tell her he had lived to regret his harshness towards her; never tell her that he had, all through the years of their estrangement, continued to love her as she had continued to love him.

  “Ma?” Noel’s clothes were paint-streaked, his hair spikily dishevelled. “Ma?” he said again awkwardly, not knowing what to say or do in such a disorientating situation. “Do you want a cup of tea?” he asked inadequately. “Have I to put the kettle on?”

  Lizzie didn’t answer him. Her eyes held Walter’s. “How can he be dead?” she whispered. “How can he be dead and not have asked to see me?”

  Walter lifted prematurely stooping shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know, Lizzie love. I don’t know why he was as he was.” He passed a hand unsteadily across his eyes. “And now I’ll never know, and nor will anyone else.”

  The sight of her brother’s distress pierced Lizzie’s frozen immobility. With a strangled cry, tears streaming down her face, she stepped towards him. “Oh, Walter!” she sobbed as his arms closed around her. “I always thought the day would come when Father and I would be friends again! And now it never will! Not ever!”

  As she sobbed and sobbed, a little girl again, a little girl longing for paternal love and understanding, Laurence and Noel stood by, anguished and appalled.

  All through the long years of his marriage it had never occurred to Laurence that Lizzie was suffering such inner hurt over her father’s refusal to communicate with her, and the realization that he had been ignorant as to some of her deepest feelings shocked him profoundly.

  Noel, too, was seeing a side to his mother he had never suspected existed. Always, before, no matter how grave the situation and how great her inner distress, as when his father had suffered his stroke or the decision had been taken to move from Jesmond Avenue to Beck-Side Street, his mother had remained outwardly composed. Now, however, she was utterly distraught, sobbing like a child for a father he had always assumed she no longer had feelings for and doing so against the inadequate chest of a man who, though her brother, was a man who had never before set foot across their threshold.

  Deeply disconcerted he looked across at his father and saw, with a fresh stab of shock, that his father looked almost as distressed as Walter Rimmington. His eyes widened. His father couldn’t be grieving over his grandfather’s death, for to the best of his knowledge his father and Caleb Rimmington had never been on friendly terms. As his mother was rocked, still weeping, against the fine tweed of Walter Rimmington’s jacket, understanding dawned. It was his mother’s grief that was so distressing his father. His love for her was so deep, her pain was his.

  The realization made him more embarrassed than ever and he cleared his throat, saying again, tentatively, “Have I to put the kettle on?”

  This time his father, at least, responded to him. “Ye … es, lad,” he said, swaying as he struggled to stay upright.

  Noel took two swift strides, taking hold of his father’s useless right arm, pressing him back down into his armchair.

  “There’s no need to remain standing, Pa,” he said gruffly, wishing that his mother would stop crying and attracting the attention of the entire street. He didn’t have to look through the window to know that every Nosy Parker from the bottom of Beck-Side Street to the top, were standing on their front doorsteps or at the ends of the passageways, goggling at the unbelievable ostentation of Walter Rimmington’s motorcar and pruriently speculating as to the cause of the grief-stricken sobs issuing from their home.

  Wishing fervently that Nina or Rose would put in an appearance, he picked up the fire-blackened kettle and, side-stepping his mother and his uncle, went into the cellar-head to fill the kettle at the tap.

  Tapped water, in Beck-Side Street, was a very recent luxury and he remembered how indignant Jenny Wilkinson had been when she had told him that all the houses in Beck-Side Street now had indoor cold taps, and he had failed to be suitably impressed.

  He turned the tap on. Jenny would be on her way home from the mill, but where would her mother be? Mrs Wilkinson wasn’t quite as much of a Nosy Parker as their other mutual neighbours, but even if she wasn’t standing with folded arms at the end of the passageway she would certainly be able to hear his mother’s sobs through their shared wall and would be anxious as to their cause.

  He wondered if, when he had put the kettle on the hob, he should nip round the back and have a word with her. She was too good a friend to his mother to be left worrying that his father had had another stroke, or that something had happened to Nina or Rose. And where were Nina and Rose? He turned off the tap. He’d left Nina by the Beck an hour or so ago. She couldn’t still be there, surely? And what the devil was she going to make of the news that their grandfather was dead?

  He stepped back into the room, dripping water droplets from the heavy kettle as he did so, relieved to see that though his mother was still crying, she wasn’t doing so with such disturbing abandon and that someone, presumably her brother, had given her a large, serviceable handkerchief.

  As he set the kettle on the hob Walter Rimmington spoke to Laurence. “My father’s body will be home by tonight,” he said awkwardly, painfully aware that, because he had allowed his father to forbid him contact with Lizzie, Laurence Sugden’s opinion of him was not very great. “William is accompanying it. Harry and Lottie returned to Ilkley this morning, by train. It’s been a terrible experience for them. So far from home … no mature person with them to handle things …”

  As his father struggled to make a suitably sympathetic reply, there came the sound of running feet. The feet were female and lightly-booted, not clogged, and as they drew nearer and nearer Noel swung round to face the door. It was Rose. It had to be Rose. Only Rose would race down the steep street so heedlessly fast. She would have seen the Rimmington motorcar and would have assumed …

  As he realized what her assumption would be, he took a swift step towards the door. With luck he’d be able to halt her pell-mell run and break the truth to her before she burst into the house. He was seconds too late.

  The door rocked back on its hinges before he was even within reach of it. “Where’s Grandfather?” she demanded breathlessly, whirling into the room, her hair flying around her shoulders, her cheeks rosy with excitement, her eyes shining. “I’ve run and run in order that he wouldn’t leave before I got here! Are you my Uncle Walter? I’m Rose and …” the expression on his face checked her instantly.

  Her mother was now standing by her father’s chair and she spun to face her. At the sight of her mother’s tear-ravaged face her eyes flew to her father’s face, and then to Noel’s.

  Her father’s obvious distress and Noel’s equally obvious deep discomfiture, banished every shred of her fizzing elation.

  “What is it?” Her voice was hoarse, thick with rising panic. “What’s the matter? Why is Ma crying?” and then, not waiting for a reply, she rounded on her uncle, “Where’s my grandfather?” she demanded with fierce urgency. “Why have you come here without him? Where’s my grandfather?”

  It was Noel who finally spoke. Walter Rimmington, acutely aware of being in another man’s home, felt good manners decreed her father or mother broke the news of her grandfather’s death to her. Laurence, aware of his agonizingly undignified speech defect, was reluctant to do so. Lizzie, knowing how Rose had longed and longed to one day meet her grandfather, was incapable of it.

  “Grandfather Rimmington is dead,” Noel said, wishing fervently that Walter Rimmington wasn’t still present. “He was in London with our cousins, to see the Olympic Game
s, and he died there, in his sleep.”

  The blood drained from Rose’s face. Dead? How could her grandfather be dead? She rocked back on her heels unsteadily. He couldn’t be dead. She hadn’t met him yet. He couldn’t die before they had met; before they had had a chance to become friends. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be.

  Her father said gently, “I … I’m so … orry, li … ttle lo … ove.”

  She looked into his loving face, saw the compassion in his eyes, and knew that her world had changed and would never be the same, ever again.

  “Excuse me,” she said in a taut, stilted voice – a voice that didn’t seem to be hers at all. “I think … I want … Excuse me.”

  She was at the door. Had opened it. Was on the pavement. Dimly she was aware of her mother calling after her and of Noel saying that it would be best if she were let be.

  She paused for a second as the door clicked shut behind her. The throng clustering around the motorcar fell silent.

  “What’s up, Rose love?” someone finally ventured. “Have your Ma and Pa got trouble?”

  “Has someone died, lass?” another neighbour asked sympathetically. “Has your Ma suffered a sad loss?”

  Rose didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Jenny came up to her, wide-eyed and anxious, scraps of weaving thread still clinging to her hair. “Wasn’t it your granded come to visit? I heard your mam crying. Nowt’s happened to Nina, has it? Or to your pa?”

  Rose shook her head, unable to put the awfulness of what had happened into words. “No,” she said, desperate to put as much distance between herself and the prying eyes of her neighbours as possible. “I’m going down to the Beck to be on my own for a while, Jenny. I’ll tell you everything when I get back.”

  Her voice was dangerously unsteady and Jenny, aware that Rose was close to breaking down and knowing she wouldn’t want to do so in front of an audience, merely nodded. She’d seek Micky out while Rose was down by the Beck. Micky was the only other person, besides herself and her mother, who knew that Rose was related to the Rimmingtons and he would be as curious as she was about the Sugden’s visitor.

  She watched Rose run out of sight around the bottom right-hand corner of the street, knowing it would be useless to question her mother.

  “Rose’s mother’s family is Rose’s mother’s business, not ours,” she had said crisply when Jenny had once asked her if Rose’s grandfather really was Caleb Rimmington of Rimmington’s mill, and not just a gentleman who happened to have the same name. “No good ever comes of being a Nosy Parker, Jenny, so no more questions about the Sugdens relationship to the Rimmingtons, if you please!”

  “House door’s opening!” said one of the Nosy Parkers at present clustered around the Rimmington motorcar.

  There was an immediate shuffling of feet as, almost in unison, the small crowd shifted themselves to a more respectful distance.

  “Well, he isn’t t’Lord Mayor!” Gertie Graham, who had a ringside view of the proceedings from her doorway, pronounced as Walter Rimmington stepped out of number twenty-six and on to the hopscotch-chalked pavement. “If he was t’Lord Mayor he’d have a bloomin” great chain around his neck!”

  “P’raps he’s the toff that knocked Mr Sugden down and crippled him,” the man who had earlier teased Rose as she ran down the street, said speculatively. “Mebbe he’s come to give t’Sugdens a bit o’brass as compensation, like.”

  It was the first anyone in Beck-Side Street had heard of Mr Sugden having been run down by a motorcar and though there were a few murmurs of dissent and the words ‘stroke’and ‘seizure’ were heard, they were not heard very loudly.

  Walter crossed the pavement, doing his best to seem unconcerned at the unwelcome attention he and his motorcar were receiving. Though he felt acutely uncomfortable in the narrow, dingy street, he had every intention of quickly returning to it. Now he was again on close, loving terms with Lizzie, he was going to remain on close, loving terms with her.

  “Hey! Are you the Mister that knocked poor Mr Sugden over?” Nellie Miller’s young daughter-in-law called out bravely. “Because if you are, you should be ashamed of yourself!”

  Walter flushed with indignation. “Certainly not!” he said, beginning to crank the Renault’s starting-handle with as much dignity as the operation allowed. As the motor began to rumble into life he felt echoes of the shock that had reverberated through him when he had first realized the extent of Laurence Sugden’s disablement. So that was what had happened, was it? His handsome, talented brother-in-law had been mown down by a motorcar.

  Sombrely he seated himself behind the Renault’s steering wheel. It certainly explained why the family were no longer living in a pleasant family villa in Jesmond Avenue, but were instead enduring the cramped conditions of a mill cottage.

  He released the brake, filled with a sensation of fierce resolution. They wouldn’t be enduring such conditions for much longer, he would make sure of that. And he would make sure that his family, and Lizzie’s family, were united at the earliest opportunity. What William and Harry would make of their artisan-looking eldest cousin he wasn’t quite sure. The boy had been as paint-spattered as a labourer. As for the gamine-faced whirlwind that was his youngest niece … He felt his sombreness begin to lighten. She was obviously just as full of spirit as Lottie was and he was sure the two of them would get along splendidly.

  Narrowly missing a horse-drawn coal cart he manoeuvred the Renault limousine out of the top end of Beck-Side Street and began heading in the direction of Ilkley. Lizzie had another daughter, too. He wondered if she would be as engagingly hoydenish as Rose, and if she would be as touchingly upset at the news of her grandfather’s death as Rose had been.

  Nina paused as she neared Bull Royd, shielding her eyes against the last flare of sun, the weight of her hair looking as if it were nearly more than her slender neck could bear. Was that Rose running down the narrow strip of sloping meadow-land toward the Beck’s banks? And if it were, why was she running so erratically? It was almost as if she couldn’t see, almost as if she were crying.

  She drew in a sharp breath. Rose was crying! Icy fingers seized hold of her heart. Had their father had another stroke? Was that why Rose had so obviously come looking for her? Lifting her skirts well clear of her ankles she broke into a run, shouting as she did so, “Rose! I’m here! What’s happened, Rose? What’s happened?”

  Rose hiccupped on a sob and came to a floundering halt. She’d come down to the Beck so that she could cry for her lost dreams in privacy and now here was Nina and she was going to have to tell her about their grandfather’s death and Nina wouldn’t understand why she was so distressed about it. Nina would think only of the possible benefits; the possibility that their Uncle Walter might now start treating them as family again; that they would meet and make friends with their cousins; that their lifestyle would change and become far more Rimmington-like.

  She dashed the tears from her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath, “Grandfather’s dead,” she said bleakly as Nina raced breathlessly up to her over the rough grass. “It happened last night, in London. Uncle Walter came to tell Ma and …”

  Nina’s eyes widened to the size of gob-stoppers. “Uncle Walter Rimmington is in Beck-Side Street?” she demanded incredulously.

  “Does that mean Grandfather’s death is going to lead to a family reconciliation?”

  Rose could almost see Nina’s mind racing.

  “Are we invited to the funeral?” Nina demanded urgently. “Did Grandfather Rimmington have a deathbed change of heart? Has he left Mother a legacy?”

  Rose shook her head, wondering how it was they could be sisters and yet, in so many ways, be such complete strangers to each other.

  “No,” she said stiltedly, “I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

  Nina’s excitement blazed, crackling from her like electricity. “This could change everything, Rose! We’ll be able to visit London and Paris! Perhaps even Rome!”

&n
bsp; “We’ll never know him,” Rose said, cutting across Nina’s excitement with almost brutal terseness. “He’ll never know us. He’ll never know how talented we are; never be proud of us.”

  Nina blinked. There were times when it was awfully difficult to follow Rose’s thought processes. Sometimes, as now, she positively rambled. Their grandfather had never shown the slightest intention of one day acknowledging them, or of being proud of them. Their Uncle Walter would acknowledge them, though. Their Uncle Walter would invite them to Crag-Side and would treat them as they should always have been treated; he would treat them not only as Sugdens but as Rimmingtons.

  “Let’s go!” she said, lifting her skirts clear of her boots again, not wanting to waste another second of time. “I can’t believe I’m going to meet Uncle Walter at last! Does he look like Mother? Is it obvious they’re brother and sister?”

  “You go,” Rose said dully, shocked that, at such a time, Nina could be so eagerly curious about something so utterly trivial. “I want to be on my own for a while.”

  Nina didn’t trouble to ask her why. With her heart soaring she broke again into a run. They would all have to wear black for the funeral. Black would suit her. It would intensify the creaminess of her skin and the fox-red fieriness of her hair.

  Rose stared after her. How was it possible that Nina’s reaction to the news of their grandfather’s death was so different to her own? All through their childhood she and Nina had talked and talked of Grandfather Rimmington, wondering how old they would be before they finally met him; wondering what circumstances they would meet him in. And now that meeting would never come and Nina had not expressed an iota of regret. All she cared about was the heightened chances of at last visiting Crag-Side; of meeting their cousins; of being openly accepted by them as family.

  She turned towards the Beck, buttercups brushing against her ankle-length skirt. For as long as she could remember she had believed that one day her grandfather would rejoice in knowing her and that, a wool-man to his fingertips, he would exult in her passion for textiles and pattern, that she would, perhaps, prove to be the granddaughter of his heart.