Rosa's Island

by Val Wood

  ‘He and Da are not talking to each other,’ Matthew said, ‘apart from giving and tekking orders. Henry says he’s no more’n a labourer.’

  As they climbed into the boat, he said, ‘I’ll row back, we’d better be quick afore we’re missed.’ Now that they were on the way home he was starting to get nervous that they might be found out.

  ‘Are you scared of your da?’ Rosa asked.

  ‘No,’ he said angrily. ‘I’m not! But I don’t want you to get ’strap.’

  ‘Nobody said I hadn’t to go to see Gran on my own,’ she retorted hotly. ‘And why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Cos we’re supposed to be looking after you, that’s why. Da says it’s our Christian duty.’ He stopped rowing. ‘Onny I think there’s another reason.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know, just a feeling I’ve got.’ He looked across at her. ‘You wouldn’t understand, you’re onny a bairn.’

  ‘You mean you can’t explain,’ she ridiculed.

  ‘Mebbe.’ He pulled to the opposite bank. ‘I can’t remember ’name it’s called.’

  ‘What’s called?’

  ‘Name given to – sort of meaning.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She climbed out onto the bank and looked up to see Henry striding towards them.

  ‘I said, didn’t I?’ Matthew tied the rope. ‘I said you wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Hey, you young varmints! Where’ve you been wi’ my boat?’ Henry stood above them with his arms folded. ‘You should have asked. I might have been waiting to get across.’

  ‘Sorry, Henry!’ Rosa lifted her eyes to his. ‘We – I’ve been to see my gran.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘With Matthew.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, surprisingly. ‘Glad somebody’s got some mettle. Go on then, get off home – and you’ve not seen me, do you hear?’

  They both nodded. They knew where he was going and that he probably wouldn’t get home that night.

  ‘Be careful, Henry,’ Matthew shouted to him as he pulled away. ‘Don’t tummel in.’

  ‘It’ll not be ’first time if I do,’ Henry answered. ‘Don’t worry about me!’

  ‘I’m not going back yet.’ Rosa stopped suddenly. ‘It’s not tea time is it?’

  ‘Well, it might be.’ Matthew looked up at the sky. ‘Sun’s a bit lower. Where you thinking o’ going?’

  ‘To our old house. Marsh Farm. I want to see what they’re doing to it.’

  Matthew pulled a face and took a deep breath. ‘I’d better come with you then. It’s all clarty round there where they’ve been digging drains. But they’ve not done owt to ’house.’

  ‘Well, I still want to go,’ she said, and set off in that direction.

  The sun was lower and it was also hidden by cloud. The fine day they had enjoyed was darkening with the threat of rain. ‘We should go another day,’ Matthew said. ‘I’ve got pigs to see to when I get back.’

  ‘Well, go then,’ she said calmly. ‘You don’t have to come. I know my own way.’

  He didn’t answer but trudged at the side of her. ‘There’s nowt to see,’ he said, after a moment or two. ‘Our Jim’s not got settled in.’

  She didn’t answer but walked on.

  ‘You’re ’most infuriating lass I know,’ he burst out. ‘Our Delia’s right. You onny wants to do what you like.’

  She shrugged. Then she relented. ‘I’ll give you my piece of cake at tea time, if you like.’ She gazed up at him and placed her hand in his. ‘I don’t like it when you get cross with me, Matthew. I’m not bothered about what Delia says.’

  A warmth gathered over him as he felt her small hand in his. He didn’t know why but he only ever wanted to please her. He didn’t feel the same towards his sisters, except perhaps Maggie, who was almost like a second mother to him.

  ‘Come on then,’ he said gruffly. ‘Let’s hurry up afore it rains.’

  But the skies opened in a sudden pelting shower of rain as they reached the farmyard and they dashed towards the shelter of the house. ‘Will Jim be in, do you think?’ Rosa asked as rain ran down her hair, making it look blacker than ever. ‘Try ’door sneck, see if it’s open.’

  Matthew lifted the sneck and it yielded. ‘Give it a push, it sticks a bit,’ Rosa said. ‘It allus did.’

  Matthew put his hand on the kitchen door and pushed. He whispered, ‘Our Jim might be here.’

  He was. Jim was sitting by the dead fire with his head in his hands, staring into the space where the flames should have been. The room was in darkness, no candle or lamp was lit and the sky outside was leaden grey. The door creaked as they pushed against it and Jim jumped to his feet.

  ‘Who’s there? Who is it?’

  ‘It’s onny us, Jim. Matthew and Rosa.’ Matthew said urgently. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘God in heaven!’ Jim put his hand to his brow. ‘You frightened me to death. I thought – I thought—’ He stared at Rosa and took a deep breath, then shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter. It’s nowt. Nowt at all.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AS THE SEASONS passed, when summer followed spring and cold winter followed mellow autumn, Rosa gave up the thought that her father might come back in his ship with golden sails. I was just a dreaming child, she thought on her seventeenth birthday, my head was filled with stories from my mother’s imagination.

  It was ten years since she had come to live with the Drews and although she was accepted as part of the family, she still felt apart from them, and as she gazed into her bedroom mirror, she also knew that she looked different from them. Her hair was black and glossy and almost to her waist, but it was her dark eyes which she knew marked her as foreign, large and lustrous with thick lashes, within her ivory skin.

  Mrs Drew had told her and Delia that Mr Drew had agreed that one of them could go into service. Delia had not wanted to make the first decision and Rosa, knowing her so well, speculated that Delia would try to find out what Rosa desired and then put a spoke into her plans and say that that was just what she wanted to do.

  Delia had a spiteful nature and sly ways, but was no match for Rosa who announced that she would like to go into service somewhere along the coast if she could find a place. ‘I like being by the water,’ she said eagerly. ‘I don’t want to be inland. Perhaps Hornsea?’ she questioned, speaking of the coastal village. ‘It’s quite a long way but I’ve heard it’s very pleasant.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Delia wailed. ‘She knows that’s where I wanted to go! I’ve allus said so.’

  ‘Now, now, girls! You can’t both go. Mr Drew said one of you must stay at home to help Maggie.’ Mrs Drew wasn’t well. She had constant backache and had difficulty walking without pain and Maggie was effectively running the house.

  ‘Well, not me!’ Delia grumbled. ‘I don’t see why I should be a servant in our own house. I can earn some money if I go to Hornsea. Let her stop here and earn her keep!’

  ‘Delia!’ her mother admonished. ‘Rosa is like a sister to you, just as your other sisters are, she doesn’t have to earn her keep.’

  ‘No, she’s not.’ Delia glared at Rosa. ‘You’ve onny to look at her to know she’s not one of us.’

  ‘Any more of this and you won’t go anywhere.’ Mrs Drew was upset at this exchange and Rosa stepped in quickly. Hornsea was the last place she wanted to go to. She wanted to stay here on Sunk Island.

  ‘It’s all right, Aunt Ellen. I don’t mind, honest. If Delia wants to go I’ll stay here and help you and Maggie,’ and she gave Delia a compassionate forbearing smile.

  ‘You’re a young minx,’ Maggie said later as they prepared supper. ‘You didn’t want to go anywhere, did you?’

  Rosa gave a low laugh. ‘No, I didn’t. What I’d really like to do is go to my gran’s old house and clean it up and make it liveable again.’

  So whilst Delia went off to work as a housemaid in one of the large houses in Hornsea, Rosa, when she had finished her chores at Home Far
m, took herself off to Marsh Farm to make some kind of order out of the chaos which Jim had lived in over the years.

  ‘Seventeen?’ her grandmother had exclaimed when she visited her on her birthday, going alone and across the new bridge that had been built across the north channel. ‘Seventeen! I can hardly believe it. I’ve lost track of ’years. Such a bonny babby you were, Rosa. Black hair, black eyes.’

  ‘Brown, Gran,’ Rosa smiled. ‘Not quite black.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Miss Dingley was very old and very forgetful and needed constantly reminding about most things.

  ‘Rosa,’ Mrs Jennings said. ‘You remember? Our Mary’s daughter.’

  Miss Dingley, whose skin was as dry as parchment, gazed at her uncomprehendingly from clouded eyes. ‘She’s got raven hair. Who is she, did you say?’

  Mrs Jennings didn’t answer her. ‘You get more and more like your da, Rosa. You’ve got that foreign look.’

  Rosa knew that. She knew by the heads that turned when strangers saw her at Patrington market, and if foreign seamen came into Stone Creek where she sometimes walked on a Sunday, they would smile and speak to her in a foreign tongue and she wished that she could have understood.

  ‘I feel like dancing sometimes, Gran,’ she said, ‘and that must be my father’s blood. But there’s never any music at Home Farm. Mr Drew says it’s sinful unless we’re singing hymns and praising the Lord.’

  Her grandmother tutted. ‘Well, I do believe that foreigners sing and dance and they’re believers too, so it can’t be all that sinful! If you want to dance, Rosa, then dance!’ Then she looked thoughtful. ‘There’s an old squeeze box somewhere. Your grandda used to play it and your ma used to try and get a tune out of it when she was a lass. Now where did it go? It wasn’t in ’sale.’

  Rosa shook her head. She didn’t remember it.

  ‘No,’ her grandmother said. ‘When I think about it, she put it away afore you were born – when your da went away and didn’t come back. She said there was no music in her life any more.’

  Poor Ma, Rosa thought. How she must have loved him.

  ‘Is it in that old chest I gave you?’

  ‘What? Sorry, Gran! Which old chest?’

  ‘I gave you a chest with your ma’s things in it – when we sold up.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Aye, it had a few trinkets belonging to your ma, and my best linen for when you meet somebody and set up house. Have you met anybody?’ She gazed quizzically at Rosa. ‘You’re old enough now you’re seventeen.’

  Rosa laughed. ‘No, Gran, I haven’t. Though Henry keeps saying he’s going to marry me when I’m older.’

  ‘Henry? Henry Drew? Why, how old’s he?’

  ‘Twenty-eight or so, not yet thirty anyway. But I’m not going to marry him. He’s like my brother!’

  ‘I should think not! I’ve seen him in Patrington, coming out of yon inn.’ She inclined her head towards the window and down the street. ‘He’s allus worse for drink. I don’t know how he gets home sometimes.’

  ‘Sometimes he doesn’t,’ Rosa admitted, and kept to herself how she and Matthew sometimes had to half carry, half drag Henry home, and it was in this state of inebriation that Henry always asked her to marry him and Matthew always got angry.

  ‘Aye, that chest,’ her grandmother had continued. ‘It might be in there – ’squeeze box I mean. Have a look when you get back. Ask Mrs Drew, she might know.’

  Mrs Drew was lying down on the parlour sofa when Rosa arrived home. She’d had a nasty turn, she said, and Maggie was making her a hot drink. Rosa sat down beside her and took her hand. ‘I don’t like to see you ill, Aunt Ellen.’ She felt compassion for this kindly woman who had always treated her as one of her own.

  ‘You’re a good girl, Rosa,’ Mrs Drew gave her a weak smile. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you. Even Jim says what a difference you’ve made to Marsh Farm since you started cleaning it up. Yet he still spends more time at home than he does there.’

  ‘It only needed a warm fire and ’cobwebs brushing down, Aunt Ellen. Nothing else much.’

  ‘I know. Your gran allus kept it nice and homely. But Jim never liked going there, not even on errands when he was a lad. He used to ask Henry to go instead.

  ‘Me and Mr Drew were talking, Rosa.’ She spoke hesitantly. ‘And he said I should put it to you, well, for you to think about, nothing more, cos you’re still onny young.’

  Rosa’s brows furrowed. What was she going to say? Or rather what was it that Mr Drew had asked her to say?

  ‘It’s just that – ’ Mrs Drew eased herself up on the sofa and winced as if in pain. ‘Our Jim, well, he could do with a wife. Mr Drew wants him to have a wife anyway. One who would look after him at ’farm. He can’t expect our Maggie to keep looking after him when I’m gone.’

  ‘Oh, Aunt Ellen. You’re not really ill, are you?’ Rosa grasped her hand tightly.

  ‘No. No,’ Mrs Drew assured her. ‘Just a bit put out at the moment. But we have to look ahead and if owt should happen to me, why, our Maggie will have all on to look after her da and Henry and Matthew as well, though I expect our Matthew will wed eventually. He’s a handsome lad and I hear tell that there’s a few lasses been mekking sheep’s eyes at him.’

  Rosa suddenly felt cold at her words. She had seen Matthew talking and laughing with girls on Patrington market days. She had seen how they listened to his every word, how they flashed their eyes and tossed their hair and petticoats to attract his attention. He was handsome, no doubt about it. He was tall and broad with thick dark hair and a pleasant open face and blue eyes which laughed when his mouth did.

  She always ignored him when she saw him away from the farm, she would cross the street rather than let him think she had seen him with his crowd of admirers, though she felt as if his eyes were following her. But when they were at home they were easy with each other, even though he no longer asked her to go fishing with him as he had done when they were children.

  ‘So, what Mr Drew thought – what we thought, I mean, was – would you ever consider our Jim for a husband? He’s a fair bit older than you, of course, gone thirty is Jim. Not that that matters in a husband.’ Mrs Drew went pink in the face. ‘He’d – he’d still be – well, I expect he’d like a family. That’s what Mr Drew would expect anyway, and I’d like some grandbairns too. I allus thought that Henry would be married by now,’ she sighed. ‘But it seems my lads don’t want to leave home.’

  Rosa was aghast. Marry Jim! She’d rather throw herself in the Humber. He had become more morose as he got older. He never smiled. Hardly ever said thank you, and when he’d stood back on first seeing Marsh Farm after she had swept and cleaned and got rid of his rubbish and made a fire in the grate, he’d only said begrudgingly, ‘By heck, Rosa, I thought I’d got in ’wrong house.’

  Jim was a man of few words, unlike Henry who was a man of many, especially when he’d been drinking.

  ‘You look after your lads too well, Aunt Ellen.’ Rosa stood up and went to open the door wider as Maggie struggled with the tea tray, and so avoided answering the question. ‘That’s why they don’t want to find a wife and leave home.’

  ‘There can be no other reason,’ Maggie said grimly. She had plainly heard most of the conversation and shook her head at Rosa.

  ‘So will you think about what we’ve asked, Rosa?’ Mrs Drew said. ‘There’s no rush, but if you’d keep it in mind.’

  ‘What does Jim think about it?’ Rosa said, although she had already made up her mind.

  Mrs Drew looked doubtful. ‘I don’t think Mr Drew has mentioned it yet. He thought we should put ’idea to you first. He said Jim wouldn’t object.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dare to, you mean, Ma,’ Maggie muttered. ‘He does owt Da tells him. He’s right under his thumb.’

  ‘Now, Maggie,’ Mrs Drew began, but Rosa poured the tea and interrupted, anxious to change the subject. ‘I’ve just remembered,’ she said. ‘When I went to see my gran, she
said that when I came here to live, she gave me a chest with some linen in it, for if I ever get wed,’ she added, giving Mrs Drew some hope. ‘I can’t remember seeing it.’

  ‘There was a chest. We brought it across from Marsh Farm.’ Mrs Drew furrowed her forehead. ‘Now where did it go?’

  ‘Up in ’loft, I expect, Ma,’ Maggie said. ‘That’s where most stuff goes that we don’t need.’

  ‘Ah, well, you won’t want it just yet, will you, Rosa?’ Mrs Drew looked at her and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I shan’t need ’linen.’ Rosa dashed her hopes. ‘But Gran thought there was an old squeeze box in it. I’d like to have a look at that. See if I can play it,’ she added, taking a sip of tea.

  Mrs Drew had misgivings, but Maggie frowned at her mother. ‘Why not, Ma? Why shouldn’t we have a bit o’ music now and then? Other folk do. I remember when we had ’party for ’Queen’s coronation, our family was onny one not allowed to dance.’

  Rosa remembered it too. Only she had danced. Henry had whisked her away behind a barn and swung her around in time to the music they could hear coming from the field, where they were having the feast. A fiddler was playing and then someone else joined in with a penny whistle. She’d clapped her hands and tapped her feet and Henry had spotted Matthew watching them and made him dance too. She had laughed at his blushes; Matthew had been prone to blush at most things then, but as if in defiance of her laughter, he had seized her hands and clumsily whirled her off her feet.

  ‘So can I go up into ’loft and have a look?’ she asked. ‘Gran said there were some of my mother’s things in the chest as well.’

  ‘Ask Matthew to go up. It’s a bit tricky up ’ladder,’ Maggie advised. ‘And it’ll be full o’ cobwebs and birds’ nests.’

  She asked him at supper. ‘Matthew,’ she said. ‘Will you help me to look in ’loft? There’s an old chest of my gran’s somewhere and Maggie thinks it might be up there.’

  ‘A chest? What’s an old chest of Mrs Jennings’s doing here?’ Mr Drew brusquely interrupted Matthew’s reply.

  ‘It’s one that came with me when I moved in.’ Rosa looked across at him. Why does he have to constantly question everything? she wondered. ‘It’s got some linen and things in it.’