‘Don’t be frightened, Rose,’ said Mrs C. Rasmussen. ‘Stays won’t bite you.’ And she smiled and hugged the child again and asked could she keep a secret.
‘I’m already keeping the stays a secret, and the bedroom a secret, and I can keep lots more,’ said Rose.
So Mrs C. Rasmussen pulled back the stays and other long, coloured dresses, and showed Rose a red jacket hanging right at the back. The jacket had gold shoulders and gold cords with tassels and a silver and blue star pinned to the jacket pocket.
‘Your uncle Con the Brake used to wear this,’ said Mrs C. Rasmussen, and held Rose up so she could touch the gold. Rose looked at Mrs C. Rasmussen and supposed that if Con the Brake were a handsome prince in disguise, this woman might be a beautiful princess in disguise. Or the queen. When she had her stays on.
After that, Rose called in quite often and if Mrs C. Rasmussen wasn’t too busy they would go into the prince’s bedroom and dress up in silk scarves and hats and would dance and sing.
‘Where did you learn to dance like that?’ said Mrs C. Rasmussen in a sharp voice, and Rose said the ladies where her mother worked before they were at the beach taught her.
‘It is not a dance for Denniston,’ said Mrs C. Rasmussen, but then she laughed and said, ‘Rose, Rose, we are birds of a feather and it is a good dance, for all that, and we shall dance it together in here, but it will have to be yet another secret.’
‘It’s a good thing I can remember a lot of things,’ said Rose.
‘It is,’ said Mrs C. Rasmussen, and laughed and kicked her fat white legs high in the air.
One time when Rose and Mrs C. Rasmussen had a pile of glass beads and jet and amber necklaces and a tiny pair of gold earrings on the bed and they were pretending it was Aladdin’s treasure in the magic cave, Rose told her friend about her father’s bag of gold and how she thought it might be buried under the floorboards, but she wasn’t allowed to dig down to see.
‘Buried treasure!’ said Mrs C. Rasmussen.
‘My mother says it’s a mystery where he gets the money for drink.’
‘So it is, so it is, child, but I doubt Jimmy Cork has any stash of gold.’
‘He could be a prince in disguise like Uncle Con the Brake.’
‘Well, he could, that’s true. And you his beautiful daughter. With a diamond ring.’
Mrs C. Rasmussen put a sparkling ring on Rose’s thumb. The child looked at it, then closed her fingers around it. She looked up again.
‘My father says I can’t share his treasure, I must find my own.’
‘Whispering is no use, Rose — I can’t hear what you’re saying.’
‘I must find my own treasure.’
Mrs C. Rasmussen gathered up the necklaces and put them back in her velvet box. She gently prised open the child’s hand, took off the sparkling ring, put the ring in the box and closed the lid softly.
‘The ring is only glass,’ she said. ‘It is not treasure.’ Then she smiled at Rose and hugged her with soft arms that smelled of bread. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘you are more of a treasure than that ring, and if your father won’t share his gold at least he shares you, and that is better.’
But Rose knew only too well that a child wasn’t treasure and a sparkling ring was.
ONE morning, when they have been on the Hill about a year, the sun is shining and her father has got up and stumped off along the path to his work without any argument. Her mother looks at the sun and says, ‘What about a picnic?’
‘Is it my birthday?’ says Rose, and her mother looks at her, then looks out the window and says, ‘You’ve got a good memory.’
Rose thinks about that other picnic on her last birthday, which was the day before they came up to Denniston. She remembers her mother screaming angry words and fighting with Gypsy Mary, who Rose liked. Gypsy Mary smoked a pipe and told strange stories. Usually her mother and Gypsy Mary laughed together and slapped each other’s backs and slept in the same tent when they were not with one of the men. But this day her mother was angry about the food.
‘You greedy bitch!’ screamed her mother. ‘That scone was a picnic for the child’s birthday and you have scoffed the lot!’
‘Oh yes?’ shouted Gypsy. ‘One scone for a child’s birthday? Tell me another! For your own belly, more like, and mine is in more need! I saw Bob, who is more mine than yours any day of the week, give you a bite — and more — last night!’ And spat in the sand in front of Rose’s mother.
Screams and hair-pulling followed, the two women staggering to and fro. Then Rose’s mother, who was the heavier, had Gypsy down on the stones beating her head against them, up and down, screeching like a wild animal with the others backing off and quieting their laughter to see such fury. Rose knew that when her mother was like this nothing could stop her, and the only thing to do was hide somewhere until it was over. She remembers seeing the blood, and Gypsy lying there without moving. She remembers the crowd of angry people waving their arms at her mother, shooing her away as if she were a stray dog.
‘I don’t want to go on a picnic,’ she says.
‘This will be different,’ says her mother. ‘Just you and me, Rosie. And maybe your father if we can find him.’
‘Is it my birthday?’
‘Near enough.’
‘Can Michael come?’
‘No. Don’t mention Hanrattys to me.’
‘Can Mrs C. Rasmussen come?’
‘That’s enough of questions. See if there’s an egg.’
Rose goes into the back yard where the chickens are scratching in the mud. She unhooks the loop of wire and goes into the little hen house and feels in the straw of the first wooden box, but there is no egg. The red hen she calls Lady Alice is sitting in the next box and she shoos the hen off. Lady Alice clucks and walks around in circles while the child picks up two little eggs. In the fourth box one brown egg is half hidden. Rose puts Lady Alice’s eggs on the ground, makes her apron into a hammock with one hand, picks up the three eggs with her other hand, puts them in the hammock and brings them inside.
‘Shut the door,’ says her mother, and then she sees the eggs. ‘Someone is on a fuss today. They must know it’s your birthday.’
Rose stands and looks at her mother.
‘What now?’ says her mother.
‘You’re smiling.’
‘Well, the hens are coming in to lay and the sun is shining,’ says her mother, ‘and I have a secret worth three golden eggs.’
‘Tell me!’
‘You have your fancy friends and I have my secrets. Now, let us make some soft little pikelets. Hungry as a horse I am, and no doubt you too, madam five-year-old!’ And she smiles again, so Rose thinks the picnic might be different this time and sings a make-up song about eggs and pikelets while her mother takes the frying pan and lays it on the fire. She rubs a little lard into it, then pours batter in three lovely round pools onto the smoking iron. When bubbles rise in the creamy batter she flips them over with a knife. The cooked side is brown and smooth as skin.
‘Bring a fresh tea-towel, quick, quick!’ says her mother, and when Rose has unfolded it her mother flips the pikelets, one two three, into the cloth, and pours three more rounds and three more until there are fifteen pikelets in the cloth.
‘Where did you learn to count like that?’ says her mother, and Rose says she doesn’t know and then counts up to fifty-four.
‘That’s enough of counting, you are wearing my ears to stumps!’ says her mother. ‘Count yourself into your coat, or the day will be gone before any picnic is begun.’
They put the tea-towel of pikelets and a jar of jam, a knife and an apple into the basket and button their coats. Eva Storm wraps a blanket around her neck like a giant scarf, and off they go on their picnic.
They walk past the tree-trunk house but Mrs C. Rasmussen’s rocking chair on the porch is empty, and they walk up past the Bins with all its clattering and thumping, and skip quickly across the railway lines in case a wagon is coming. Ros
e waves to Uncle Con the Brake, and Rose’s mother shouts ‘Cooee! Cooee!’ so that all the men look at her, but Con is busy and doesn’t notice. They walk up Dickson Street past Hanrattys’ and Rose waves to Mrs Hanratty, who is hanging washing in the yard. Mrs Hanratty doesn’t see them either.
‘We are going on a picnic,’ shouts Rose to Mrs Hanratty’s back.
‘No need to tell all the world,’ says her mother.
They walk up above the skipway and watch the boxes of coal coming and going. Rose counts all the wagons full of coal going past on their way to the Bins and all the empty ones going back to the mines, the same way they are walking. She counts twenty of each, exactly equal, and tells her mother how the coal gets tipped out at the Bins and how Mr Carmichael counts all the wagons of coal and writes them all in a book and adds them all up at the bottom of the page.
‘For pity’s sake,’ says her mother, ‘give my ears a rest and enjoy the sunshine.’ And Rose looks at her mother and sees she is half smiling, so tells her some more things: her names for all the hens (Annabella and Clementine and Queen Victoria and Lady Alice and the rooster, Prince Charming), and a song Mrs C. Rasmussen knows about sailing home to Ireland. Then her mother waits, looking away and standing black like a fencepost, while Rose walks behind a bush to do her business because there is no toilet anywhere.
‘Will the picnic be soon?’ asks Rose.
‘Very soon, because this fat old body will go no further,’ says her mother, puffing and blowing. ‘Oh, my dear God, Rosie, this lump of a baby is a curse. I will be glad to take my own good shape again. Keep an eye sharp, now, for your father.’
Jimmy is working these days around the Banbury mine.
‘Dogsbody work,’ her father grumbles. ‘Whatever lowly graft a one-armed man can do.’ But he has promised to slip away and meet them on the plateau above the entrance for Rose’s picnic. ‘To tell the truth, girlie,’ says Jimmy, ‘the job is out of pity and I am little use anyway. They will only be glad if I am away for a bit, and they don’t have to look out for me.’
Below them is the black entrance to the mine. The boxes on the moving skipway rattle in and out on their little railway lines. Here comes Jimmy Cork, scuttling up the slope, looking back to see if anyone has noticed. He is humming and smiling and nods at her in a secret way.
‘Well now, birthday girl, we are making progress with our plans,’ he whispers. ‘I think I have found a way! But that is our little secret, eh?’
‘Do you mean the gold?’ whispers Rose.
Jimmy nods and winks and does a little dance.
‘Someone is in a good mood,’ says her mother, unwrapping the pikelets and spreading the blanket they have brought. Jimmy comes up behind her, puts his one good arm around her and gives her huge belly a good squeeze. Rose’s mother shrieks, but it is really a laugh. Jimmy beats on the lump of the baby like a drum and sings:
Bright fine gold,
Bright fine gold.
One a pecker two a pecker,
Bright fine gold.
Quick as a flash, he snatches a pikelet and stuffs it in his mouth. Rose and her mother shout and chase him around the rocks and lumpy moss, all of them laughing and shouting, until Jimmy is caught and marched back to the blanket.
‘There are five each and you have only four left,’ says Rose, pulling her father’s beard until the tears roll down his face.
‘Oho! And so I have bred a mathematical genius then,’ says Jimmy. ‘Well, it is no surprise, given her father’s intelligence, and if you have half your mother’s looks you will take the world by storm!’
It is the best time Rose can remember.
‘Jimmy, you will not lose your job, now, stealing away like this?’ says Rose’s mother, and Jimmy laughs.
‘See now, Angel, this job is only a stop-gap till we find our feet, which may be sooner rather than later. My job today,’ and he spits on the ground, ‘is to wander around like some poor lost soul with a lamp, testing the air. The inspector has complained of the air once more and the manager is trying to fob him off with a full-time, one-armed air tester. He knows he should cut another air shaft but he’s too mean to waste the money. Oh yes, the miners laugh to see me wander around. And grumble if I get in their way. Those sour-faced Scobies! Twice already they have made it damned clear they are better off without me. Well, let them laugh. I know a thing or two.’ Here Jimmy winks at Rose. ‘Jesus, I hate those stuck-up English miners and their opinionated sons.’
‘Jimmy, Jimmy,’ says Rose’s mother, ‘do not spoil a good day with your moaning. You have a job and it is the child’s birthday.’
‘And the hens have started laying,’ says Rose, ‘and I found three eggs — two from Lady Alice and one from Queen Victoria — and we have made these fifteen pikelets in the frying pan and so here we are on a picnic!’
He father laughs. ‘What a torrent! Quick, let us stop her mouth with a pikelet before we are drowned in words.’
Her mother and her father are both hungry so they eat five pikelets each, and all the jam and a quarter of an apple each, and her mother gives the last quarter to Rose’s father.
He wipes his orange beard with his hand, then rubs his hand on the grass.
‘Those were the best pikelets I’ve ever tasted.’
‘What’s put you in such a good mood?’ says Rose’s mother.
‘Well, those pikelets, naturally,’ says Jimmy, but he winks at Rose.
Rose’s mother shifts to find a more comfortable place. ‘Lack of drink more like,’ she says.
‘Ah, don’t start now, it is the child’s birthday.’ Jimmy sighs, and Rose thinks that perhaps the picnic is going to end badly after all.
‘Rosie, Rosie,’ says Jimmy, ‘what a life we’ve landed you in.’
Her mother says nothing, but looks away.
Then Jimmy puts one finger into a small pocket in his waistcoat and hooks out a tiny bag made of leather, with a string to pull it shut.
‘Hold out your hand,’ he says, and Rose holds it out. He pulls open the drawstring and shakes a little warm thing into her palm. It is flat like a piece of paper and red-gold like the yolk of an egg. It is heavy for such a small thing and its edges are smooth as if it were a drop of water splashed on the ground and then gone solid.
‘Is it gold?’ she says.
‘It is. Happy birthday, girlie.’
‘Is it for me?’
‘Why not?’
‘Jimmy,’ says her mother.
Her father says, ‘There is no need to look like that, it is the only piece I have, which I carry for luck. She might as well have it, though she will need more than one flake of the colour to see her through this world.’
Rose closes her hand around the warm gold and looks at her mother.
‘Jimmy Cork!’ says her mother, flinging her arms wide and beginning to shout. ‘I know you, you would not give away your last flake. You are hiding something from me, and Jesus spare you if I find you are cheating on me!’
‘Cheating?’ says Jimmy, ‘Who is cheating who? Tell me that! I have sharp enough eyes and ears for what they are saying. And where is your evidence, woman? Do you see me a rich man? Calm down, for God’s sake, or they will hear in the mine and think it is a cave-in. I have given a small piece of treasure to my daughter, who is dying for some. And anyway it is only a few pennyweight.’
Rose asks her mother if she can keep the gold and her mother looks away out over the flat land and the little humpy bushes with sun shining on the leaves, and she folds her hands in her lap where she is sitting on the rug and says nothing.
‘Can I keep it?’ asks Rose again.
‘Keep it, keep it,’ shouts her mother. ‘And we will see about the rest later — count on it, Jimmy!’
Jimmy winks and smiles at Rose, and she hugs him, and kisses the bristly beard.
‘Ah now, Angel,’ says Jimmy. ‘This fresh air puts me in the mood, and why not when the world is smiling? Rosie, my little girlie, go down to the mine entran
ce and watch the boxes come out, while I talk to your mother.’
‘Can I have the bag too?’
Her father gives her the little bag and she drops her first treasure into it. Rose pulls the string tight and slips the loop over her wrist. She tucks the bag with the gold flake glowing inside into the palm of her hand and holds tight.
‘Go on, off you go,’ says her mother, so Rose runs over to the tunnel entrance with the bag soft like a little mouse in her hand.
The tunnel is dark and exciting like one of Con the Brake’s stories. Big logs of wood make a square opening as if for a giant’s house, but there is no door. Train rails go right into the mine, into the dark, and two heavy chains are rattling along above the rails, coming and going and never stopping. Rose hears a rumble and stands back to watch an empty wagon, pulled by the chain, disappear into the mine. Then there is another rumble from inside the mine and she looks in, but it is dark. A grey shape is coming and she screams and laughs as the full one comes out all by itself, heaped with shining black coal, out into the sunlight, and away it goes, rolling steady and proud towards the Bins.
Rose watches while two more full boxes roll out from the darkness, and then she climbs up so she can see her mother and father. They are lying down in the sun. She wants to go back and jump in one of the empty boxes, ride it way into the mine, but her mother calls her.
Her mother is standing up now, dusting her coat down and doing up the buttons. She folds the tea-towel and puts it in the basket and Rose knows the picnic is over.
‘Say goodbye to your father,’ says her mother. ‘We will go home and cook something nice for his tea.’ Rose climbs the rock that her father is leaning on and shouts to show how tall she is, then jumps off onto the rug.
‘Will I have a birthday cake for my tea, like Michael?’ she asks.
‘For pity’s sake, isn’t pikelets enough?’ But her mother is smiling. ‘We’ll see what those hens have been up to.’
The Denniston Rose Page 6