Ah, yes, indeed. I have heard him speak of you.’ He replaced the hat gently and tweaked the feather.
‘Have you?’ For a moment she was puzzled, and then frowned at her own foolishness. In a matter of weeks Frank Roscoe would be her father-in-law. It was hardly surprising he had mentioned her name. ‘What about Kate and the other coppicers. Do you know where they are? Kate might know where he is and I need to speak to him.’ She heard the pleading note in her voice, like a soft young girl which, she supposed, was exactly what she was.
The old man was packing gaps in the stack with sods of earth to keep out the air and stop his charcoal from burning up and turning to ash, but he cast sly glances in Alena’s direction from beneath his wide-brimmed hat.
‘The coppicers are working about two miles away, in the next clearing, I believe.’ A glimmer of hope but then Alena recalled that Kate had never known where Roscoe was before, so why should she now? It was as she offered her thanks and turned to go that the old man casually remarked, ‘Not that he sees much of Kate these days. He gets home more regularly than he did. He’s a changed man is Frank, since he found the love of his life.’ Isaac smiled his knowing smile. ‘Name of Olivia, as in Twelfth Night. A good, sweet lady. I had the honour to meet her once. But you’d have to travel to the forests of Thornthwaite to find her, and perhaps the trip would be too far for you, dear child?’
‘Oh!’ Alena said, eyes shining. ‘It wouldn’t be too far at all. Do you, by any chance, know of anyone going to Keswick who could give me a lift? Or the location of the nearest bus stop?’ If she had to walk every step of the way she would find the place. Suddenly it didn’t seem any distance at all.
Chapter Twenty
She found Olivia kneeling on the lawn in her small front garden, planting out bright-eyed pansies beneath a silver birch. When she saw Alena, she dropped the trowel and ran to envelop her in a bear hug. She smelled of warm earth and flowers, and the soup she must have eaten for lunch. When the greetings were over, she insisted on warming some up for Alena. Olivia carried it out to her on a tray, together with a plate of her famous scones.
‘I must have known you were coming,’ she said, shooing off a few cheeky sparrows so she could place it on a rustic table.
‘As delicious as always,’ Alena told her when she’d finished every last drop. ‘No wonder Mrs Milburn was always so grumpy, you were a much better cook than she ever was!’
‘I wasn’t then, but I am now,’ Olivia said, laughing.
They sat in companionable silence, saying little but content to be together again, enjoying the pale spring sunshine. Alena worried over how to broach the subject so close to her heart. Later she was shown over the tiny cottage to admire the white-walled rooms, rustic furniture, a small untidy kitchen with ingle-nook and ratten crook from which hung the griddle. But most of all she loved the glorious views from the tiny windows: Skiddaw and Blencathra lifting their magnificent heads above their fellows to gaze imperiously down upon the slate calm of Bassenthwaite. Alena was entranced.
‘No wonder you love it here.’
Olivia knelt again on the lawn and picked up her trowel. You’ve come about Rob and those dreadful lies, haven’t you?’ She slid a pansy into place and patted the soil firmly about it.
Alena took a deep breath. ‘I wondered if you knew anything - anything at all to help me? My mother has told me what she knows, which is very little, but there must be more. Who was this girl? Where did she come from? Who am I? She met Olivia’s gaze, sensing a sympathy and understanding she had not expected to find.
Olivia sat back on her heels, a slight frown marring her brow. ‘I’m afraid I never saw her, or even knew she existed until recently so I can add little to the tale on my own account. I once promised Rob I would investigate, and I did, in a perfunctory way, but failed to locate either Stella or the vicar. I didn’t pursue the matter further. Couldn’t bring myself to, I suppose. Afraid of what I might find. But then Rob, more determined than I, has finally taken up the case and he ... ‘ She stopped speaking to look up as they both heard the click of the garden gate. When she turned back to Alena, she was smiling. ‘But he can tell you himself.’
And suddenly there he was, tall and bronzed and more handsome than ever. He strode up the garden path towards her but although his eyes were fixed upon her face, he wasn’t smiling.
‘I’m getting married on the last Saturday in May.’ She hadn’t meant to be so blunt, but the words sprang from her lips as if they must be spoken. Olivia had suddenly found something terribly important to do in the kitchen and Alena and Rob sat awkwardly, side by side, on the garden bench beneath the spreading arms of a sweet chestnut. They weren’t even looking at each other. Over the Skiddaw range the clouds gathered into a swirling mass, a frosting of snow still lighting the jagged peaks, reminding them that summer was still some way off.
There’d been an attempt at polite conversation, desultory and hesitant, as if they were strangers.
‘Olivia seems happier than I’ve ever seen her,’ Alena remarked. ‘She deserves it. Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘No, don’t be, it’s true. My father never made her truly happy. Too busy telling her how to behave, and filling in her diary. Whereas Frank seems to have allowed her to find herself. She’s changed. She gardens, and smokes, dresses in the kind of unfashionable clothes the old Olivia wouldn’t have been seen dead in, and she laughs a lot. Even tells jokes. All that tightly wound up emotion that made her so impossible to live with seems to have gone, or found a positive outlet. She’s so relaxed now, so obviously enjoying life.’ He picked up a soggy leaf and began to tear it into little pieces. His fingers were still long and slender, for all they were now weathered and hard. Alena wanted to kiss them.
It was in the silence following this statement that she blurted out her news.
‘So I heard. I’m glad for you, if it makes you happy.’ His voice sounded hollow and she tried to find hope in that fact.
‘Who told you?’ she asked, keeping her tone deliberately light, knotting her fingers together in her lap when really they longed to caress his face, to brush back the damp curls from his brow. ‘Was it Sandra? She kept threatening to write.’
‘Threatening? Strange choice of word. Didn’t you want me to know?’
She saw him frown, felt the undertow of anger. ‘Perhaps not,’ she admitted. An awkward silence fell between them, then Alena cleared her throat. ‘Olivia says you’ve been making some enquiries?’
He laughed, without any trace of humour. ‘I’m not sure that my efforts were such a good idea. It’s all rather too late now, isn’t it?’
‘Tell me, Rob. If you don’t, I shall burst.’
He almost laughed at her vehemence, fondness softening the tight lines of his face at last. ‘It’s true, I did get a letter from Sandra. It finally spurred me into taking action. She said you were having second thoughts.’ He waited a moment for her to correct him, but she kept her gaze fixed upon Olivia’s pansies. ‘I traced the old vicar’s widow through the good offices of the Church of England and she put me in touch with Mrs Bird, Stella’s mother. Apparently my father kept in touch with Stella, who is now dead, out of a sense of guilt. Mrs Bird is in a rest home at Lytham St Anne’s and she was surprisingly helpful.
Again he paused, and then continued more quietly, ‘You were right. James did tell us a deliberate lie. We are not brother and sister.’
She stared at him, utterly unable to speak, a part of her mind wondering why on earth she hadn’t thought to follow the same line of enquiries, yet she felt stunned by her confused emotions. Joy, hope, utter panic and despair. In one sentence her whole life had changed. But had it?
The nation was preparing to celebrate the coronation of a new King but Mickey Roscoe could think only of their coming wedding, just two weeks after that. He’d even bought railway tickets and paid for a week in a hotel in Scarborough following the ceremony.
Rob was saying, ‘You realise what this means, Ally? For us.�
�� She found she was shaking, suddenly feeling the coolness of a spring breeze on her skin.
‘It means...’ He grasped her by the shoulders and pulled her gently into his arms, warming her with his own body as she leaned against him. He kissed her then, and there was a desperate hunger in it, the fierce igniting of a long-held passion at last finding release. A kiss in which all their differences, all the years apart, seemed to melt away. Yet there was restraint there too, a sense of disbelief that they might, at last, be able to find happiness. When it was over he let her go with reluctance to keep his gaze upon her mouth. ‘I can’t find the words to express what I feel. All these years apart for no reason. All that anguish, that guilt.’ He closed his eyes and threw back his head, hands clenched into fists. ‘If only I hadn’t been so stubborn. If only I’d believed you instead of my bloody father.’
She put out a hand to halt the words, unable to bear his agony. ‘Don’t - don’t torture yourself, Rob. Of course you had to believe him. How could you not? He is your father, and I couldn’t prove…’ She stopped. ‘Rob, how do you know that what Stella’s mother says is true? What exactly did she tell you?’
He slid an arm about her, hugging her close to his side, stroking the tears from her face, kissing her again as if he could never have enough of her. Neither of them spared a thought for the fact that, barely three weeks from her wedding, this wasn’t perhaps the wisest situation for her to be in. They were both too absorbed in this new discovery, the delights of being together at last.
Then he related the story Mrs Bird had told. So many secrets and lies, it was a relief to hear the truth at last. Alena learned how Stella, when she was in service as a young girl, had found herself to be pregnant. She’d tried to get rid of the baby and apparently did herself great injury. As a result, she was unable to bear any more children.
‘So that proves you couldn’t be her child, hers and James’s.’ Rob’s voice was tight with excitement. ‘Before Stella died, she related the whole sorry tale to her mother. What Lizzie told you was absolutely true. A young girl did indeed come to the house that night, gave birth to a child - you - and then sadly died. They buried her in the woods that same night, without even a proper funeral. A poor, unknown girl, little more than a child herself, put in unconsecrated ground with nothing even to mark her existence, though apparently with a vicar officiating. Typical of my father, if you think about it: giving the appearance of doing the right thing, while really being utterly ruthless and self-seeking.’
Alena was gazing at him, enthralled.
‘He had the poor girl quietly buried because he was afraid of being accused of not doing enough to save her, of being blamed for her death. She, and you too, I expect, were a nuisance to him, no more than a problem to be addressed. Your very presence could damage his carefully nurtured reputation. All his life he’s been desperate to avoid any hint of scandal. Everyone around him has to behave with perfect obedience, doing exactly as he orders - like some bloody dictator.’
Rob stopped speaking for a moment until he had his voice back under control, then shook his head in disbelief. ‘Mother knew nothing, of course, since she was in labour at the time, with me. Everyone else involved was under strict instructions to say nothing and keep the matter a secret.’
Alena frowned. ‘But the vicar knew?’
‘Vicars, or some at any rate, can be bribed. My father made certain that this one was moved on to another parish.’
‘Ma tried to find him once, but Dad wasn’t pleased.’ Alena recalled the slap she had witnessed that day, and her father’s anger, probably because he had indeed lost his job for prying. James sacked him, perhaps bribed him with money to keep quiet. So he bought a house and brought me up as his own daughter but, not surprisingly, he always nursed a secret resentment.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Perhaps that’s why we never really got on.’
They sat now with their arms wrapped about each other, Alena’s head resting comfortably on Rob’s chest, both engrossed in their own thoughts for a long time. It was she who finally broke the silence.
‘Now what?’
He kissed the top of her head. ‘That’s rather up to you.’
They stayed with Olivia for three days. Frank came home and listened to the tale too. He showed surprisingly little resentment of the fact that she intended to call off her wedding to his son, claiming he’d always thought the marriage wouldn’t work.
‘We’ve never got on that well. Mickey thinks I neglected him when he was young, for all I did the best I could in difficult circumstances. But me own son or no, he’s too brash and pushy for you, and you’re too independent.’
They all laughed at this, then Olivia and Alena cooked a huge meal of pheasant and roast potatoes and they ate together as if they were a real family. Everybody told jokes, making a celebration of it for, in a way, that was what it was.
Alena and Rob spent every moment of those precious few days together. They walked by the lake, explored the woodlands, exclaimed over pale yellow daffodils, white garlic flowers and wild hyacinth as if they had never seen them before. They helped Olivia in her garden, touching and kissing and laughing as they dug and weeded and talked endlessly. Their happiness was so infectious that Olivia sang as she worked, and even Frank Roscoe went about grinning from ear to ear, it seemed like a glorious holiday that would never end.
Yet Alena knew she must go home, not simply because she needed to keep her job but to explain to Mickey that she could not, after all, go through with the wedding. Rob offered to come with her and help but she refused, thinking it best she do this herself, in her own way.
‘But you’ll come soon, won’t you?’
‘Just try and stop me.’
Alena arrived home to a barrage of questions except from Mickey who, thinking she’d spent the time in bed, believed it was wedding nerves that had laid her low.
The dress hung ready in her wardrobe, Sandra was to be bridesmaid and Dolly matron of honour since she wasn’t showing very much yet. Half the village seemed to be coming and Lizzie had been baking for days. The whole thing had gathered a momentum of its own and Alena no longer felt she had any say in the matter.
She knew she should tell Mickey right away. She practised what she should say. She would explain she couldn’t go through with it, that she was sorry she’d agreed to marry him in the first place because she didn’t truly love him. But that didn’t sound quite right. The days slipped by and still she hadn’t found the right words. There was something so single-minded about Mickey, something so overwhelming about his confidence, that it was hard to persuade him to see anyone else’s point of view.
The Coronation also served to delay Alena. How could she explain everything that needed to be said with excitement over the national celebration running so high? Ellersgarth was trimmed with red, white and blue bunting for the big event, street parties planned, Coronation mugs bought for the children and a day’s holiday promised for everyone. With Alena’s wedding still to come, best frocks were being ironed, hats bought and trimmed, the whole village looking upon May as an entire month of jubilation. How could she spoil it for everyone?
Perhaps, she thought, it would be better to wait until Rob arrived. Again putting off the moment of truth she waited and hoped he would come to help her, for all she had told him she’d deal with the matter herself. And he had arrangements of his own to make. The high plantations were no place for a woman, he’d told her, so he was anxious to find new employment, which wouldn’t be easy.
Finally, seven days before the wedding, she stood before Mickey, barely able to speak for nervousness. Lizzie had gone to see Sandra, ironically for a final fitting of her dress. Kit was at The Stag, and Alena had made up her mind to have the whole matter settled before they came home. She made Mickey sit in her father’s chair while she told him, noting how his face tightened, almost aged before her eyes.
She reached out a hand to him, then let it drop to her side. ‘So you see why I can’t marry you? I’m sorr
y, Mickey, but it wouldn’t be right. I don’t – I don’t feel towards you as I should, so I’m afraid I must call the wedding off.’
He glanced at her as if he didn’t quite see her. Then he got up, pulled out a chair and sat at the kitchen table. ‘How about that cup of tea you promised me? And some of your ma’s ginger cake wouldn’t go amiss, if there’s any going.’
She was stunned by his calmness. ‘Mickey, did you hear what I said? I’m asking you to release me. Rob’s come back and everything’s changed.’
‘I don’t see why.’
Alena smothered a sigh, and, sitting in the chair opposite him, she laced her fingers tightly together, striving to keep her patience and explain things properly, and kindly, as he deserved. ‘You can’t pretend you don’t know how I feel about Rob, how I’ve always felt about him. Ever since we were children together he has been a part of me. But as I’ve just tried to explain, James Hollinthwaite lied.
‘He deliberately created a feud between our families, all because he wanted to save himself from awkward questions about the death of that poor girl. He’s so utterly ruthless when it comes to his own reputation that he thought nothing of lying in order to keep it, or of driving us apart because of the festering hatred he had developed towards the Townsens over the years. Now we know there’s no reason why we can’t - can’t - get back together,’ she finished, her voice faltering as she saw the anger clouding Mickey’s face.
‘So goodbye, Mickey, and thanks for the memory, eh?’
Alena winced. ‘Don’t put it like that. I know I must have hurt you and I’m sorry for it. Truly sorry. But I can’t help it. I...’ She paused to draw in a deep breath. ‘There’s no easy way to say this, Mickey, but I love Rob, and really can’t live without him.’
‘And you no longer love me?’
She leaned across the table, anxious to make him see her point of view in as gentle a way as she could. ‘You always knew that I didn’t feel quite the same about you as you did about me. You said it didn’t matter, but it does. It matters a great deal, so it’s all for the best really. It wouldn’t have worked. You’d only have regretted it.’
The Bobbin Girls Page 29