When Frasier saw the bruise on Rose’s cheek, as she stood in the kitchen trying to make lasagne, his face was unreadable. Ted had already left, but Jenny, who was still there bustling about, dusting under and behind things, taking every opportunity to peer into drawers, told him the short version of the story in her usual blunt and to-the-point way in five seconds flat, which Rose had been grateful for. The last thing she wanted was to have to explain what had happened to Frasier.
‘And where is he now?’ Frasier asked, his expression very still.
‘I don’t know,’ Rose said, shaking her head. ‘Gone home, the police think. They rang to tell me. He hasn’t pressed charges against me – he’s probably realised he wouldn’t get away with it – and if I press charges there’ll be a scandal. His reputation, his life, his practice will all go up in smoke.’
‘So why don’t you then?’ Jenny asked her.
Rose shrugged. ‘I want him gone. I just want him gone. Not to have to go through months and months of legal stuff, and even if they do find him guilty, he’s got no record, no previous offences. He’ll probably get a slap on the wrist, and he will still be out there, angry. I can’t see the point.’
‘If you want him gone, you need to show him that this is over,’ Frasier said. ‘The police is one way of doing that.’
Rose said nothing, silently resolute.
‘Well, I’ll stay here until we can be sure he’s not still in the area,’ Frasier said, his eyes fixed on Rose’s cheek.
‘Ted stayed last night,’ Maddie told Frasier, midway through the process of sifting flour, a job Rose had given her to keep her busy. ‘But I’m not scared of Dad,’ she told Frasier, as if she was working out her own thoughts aloud. ‘Mum beat him up. He should be scared of Mum.’
‘Well, good for Ted,’ Frasier said, his voice taut. ‘But he’s gone now, and in the meantime, I’ll stay here.’ He looked at Jenny. ‘If you have a moment before you go, I brought some examples, brochures that I sent for. I’d almost forgotten what we’d been talking about until they arrived. I thought you’d like to look at them.’
Before Rose could find out what business Frasier could possibly have with Jenny, there was a muffled call from the study.
‘Dad,’ Rose said. ‘I’m so worried about him, he’s so down. Do you think you could maybe make him cross or want to throw something at you, or chuck you out, even? I’d do anything to see him his old grumpy self again.’
‘Well, breaking the news of the exhibition to him is bound to distract him,’ Frasier said a little warily. ‘I’ll give it my best shot.’
Rose followed Frasier as far as the study door, hoping to be out of earshot of Jenny, who was muttering to herself about E. coli as she returned to cleaning out the fridge, while Maddie steadfastly spooned flour through the sieve.
‘He has taken what happened with Richard very badly, blaming himself,’ Rose told Frasier.
‘He’s not the only one,’ Frasier said, reaching out and gently touching her face just below the bruise. ‘I should never have left you.’
‘What reason did you have to stay?’ Rose asked him. ‘None of us knew that would be the day Richard turned up. I’m worried about Dad. I’m worried that if he feels this deflated now, then he’ll stop trying to … stay.’
‘Why are you whispering?’ Maddie asked them, appearing at the bottom of the stairs, her hands and face covered in flour.
‘Because it’s private,’ Rose told her daughter, a little more firmly than she meant to. ‘Which reminds me, you and I are going to look at the local school in a couple of days. The nice head teacher is letting us in specially, even though they aren’t back from the summer holidays yet.’
‘Oh,’ Maddie said, utterly uncheered by the news. ‘Well, I suppose that will be OK. I’m not going if I don’t completely like it, though.’
‘Are you coming?’ Frasier asked Rose as Maddie returned to her sifting.
‘No, you go in first. Whenever he looks at me he looks so sad,’ Rose said, biting her lip. Frasier touched her briefly on the shoulder, in a moment of consolation, and then closed the door behind him.
* * *
It was almost an hour later when Frasier called Rose in to see her father. John was sitting up in bed, with a writing slope resting on his lap, and a selection of official-looking papers spread out across the bed. Obviously Frasier’s visit had had some effect on him, Rose thought gratefully. Whatever he was doing, it was better than just lying there, staring into thin air.
‘Good,’ John said purposefully when she arrived. ‘Frasier and I have been dealing with your situation. That man will only ever get near you and Maddie again over my dead body, and as that situation is imminent, I have taken measures to ensure you are protected when I’m not here.’
‘Measures?’ Rose said uncertainly, sitting on the bed.
‘I have telephoned the police station in Keswick. They are sending out an officer to take your statement about what happened. They’ll want to speak to Jenny too. They took photos last night of your injuries, and they’ll take some more today.’
‘Dad!’ Rose protested. ‘This isn’t what I want. What about Maddie? Did you stop to think about how it would affect her, knowing the police are chasing her father?’
‘This is for Maddie too,’ John said firmly, with more life than she had seen in him since yesterday. ‘It was Maddie who asked for the police. I don’t know what motivates a human to behave as your husband did yesterday, and I know that he is Maddie’s father, but still, he has to be stopped. Like Frasier stopped me from drinking by locking me up for months. Richard has to be stopped before he ruins lives beyond repair, including Maddie’s. And this is the first step to that. I know it is extreme, but perhaps official involvement is one way of making him see what it is he’s been doing, the sort of person he’s become.’
Rose bowed her head in thought. ‘OK, perhaps you’re right. But I don’t want to speak to them here. I don’t want Maddie to know. If they’re talking to Jenny too, I’ll go to the B & B; meet them there.’
‘Good,’ John said. ‘Now, I wasn’t going to tell you this just yet, but I think you need to know now. A few years ago I set up a trust fund for you. It’s not supposed to be realised until I die, but under the circumstances, I’ve asked Frasier, who is the executor, to arrange for a portion to be paid to you immediately, to pay legal fees, help you set up your new life, and to make sure you don’t want for anything. And he’s arranging for a solicitor to see you, to help you get divorce proceedings started. Her name is …?’ John looked at Frasier, who’d been standing obediently at his side all this time.
‘Janette,’ Frasier said, ‘Janette Webb. She’s excellent.’
‘Really?’ Rose said, looking at Frasier, a little breathless, not to mention just a little irritated by how speedily her life was being organised for her. She knew that both men wanted, and even needed, to help her, but this felt a little too much like control over her – that her own destiny was being taken away from her, just as she was beginning to regain it.
‘This is all a bit too fast,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure that I’m ready for this yet.’
‘Rose,’ John spoke her name urgently, ‘I have no choice but to act fast, don’t you see that? I’m not trying to railroad you, but I can’t leave you, knowing that I haven’t done all I can to make things safe for you and Maddie. I’m sure I don’t deserve that peace of mind, I know you blame me … but please let me be a father to you.’
Rose bit her lip, torn between her desire to make her dad happy and her determination to control her own life for once. This wasn’t about manipulation or control, she told herself. This was just a father trying to help his daughter.
‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘I’ll talk to the police and the Janette person. But after that I make my own decisions, OK?’
‘Very well,’ John said, seemingly content that he’d got her to take that first step to making her break from Richard permanently, and in her heart Rose
knew he was right. A prolonged stalemate between her and her husband would only make things messy and uncertain. Richard did need showing, by official means, if necessary, that her life as his wife was finished for good. Miles weren’t enough to keep him away, and if she left things as they were, sooner or later he would be back. Rose knew she couldn’t let that happen.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Dad, I’ll do what you want, for you and for Maddie.’
‘And for me,’ Frasier added, so softly that Rose wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.
‘But I want you to do something for me too,’ she continued, glancing up at Frasier, who knew exactly what she was about to say. ‘Something that would mean more to me than you can imagine.’
John looked at her suspiciously over the top of his glasses.
‘Frasier and I want to exhibit your private work, and we want to open in two weeks’ time,’ Rose rushed the words out all at once, hoping that the quicker she said them the less likely John was to have time to react negatively. She hoped in vain.
‘Absolutely not,’ John said with such vehemence that his face flooded red and Rose feared for his heart, on top of everything else. ‘I don’t even know how you can ask that of me! That work is not for sale. It is not for anyone else but me. It’s my … diary, my legacy, my gift to you when I am gone, and I will not, I repeat, I will not let this man turn it into a three-ring circus, just so he can cream his percentage off the top.’ He pointed an accusing finger at Frasier. ‘I won’t, Rose. I’m sorry, I won’t. I never wanted you to see them while I was alive; if there was a way I could stop you seeing them afterwards, then I would. They document the side of me I hate the most.’
Rose watched dismayed as John bowed his head, sweeping his glasses off his face and pinching the bridge of his nose, as tears squeezed out between his tightly shut eyes.
‘Dad,’ she said, sliding off the edge of the bed to kneel next to him. ‘Please, don’t cry. This isn’t at all what we wanted. All we wanted was to show the world what an incredible artist you are. And I haven’t seen the paintings yet. I promised you I wouldn’t and I haven’t. Frasier looked at them, and he thinks they are amazing, brilliant, wonderful.’
‘It’s true,’ Frasier said, taking Rose’s place on the bed. ‘John, don’t deprive the world of what you have here. This work is important. It needs to be seen.’
‘And I don’t suppose your concern,’ John said, gaining his composure, ‘has anything to do with how much a painting goes up in value once its creator is dead?’
Frasier looked hurt, turning his face away from his friend.
‘I know,’ he said quietly, ‘that is not what you really think of me. I know you know that I am your friend, that I always have and always will do the very best I can for you.’ When Frasier turned back to face John, his face was set with determination. ‘I will take a good deal of your vitriol, John, but not that. Besides, this exhibition would be about you, it would be for Rose. A way for you to show her your soul. Rose listened to you, now you listen to me. Do this one thing for your daughter. And if it helps we wouldn’t have to put the works up for sale. It could be for viewing only. A retrospective and an unveiling of a great undiscovered British talent in one fell swoop.’
‘I will be a laughing stock,’ John said, a little less vehemently. ‘Some foolish old man who’s made all his money painting chocolate-box-pretty pictures, and now is praying for some validation from the critics on his deathbed. How they will mock me. I’m sorry, Rose, I don’t want to disappoint you. But no, I don’t want to.’
‘Can I show you something?’ Rose went to a bookshelf in the corner of the room and retrieved something from behind it, an object that Frasier recognised as soon as he saw the familiar blanket wrapping. ‘I was going to put it on the wall for you before you got back, but I couldn’t find a hammer,’ Rose said as she unwrapped the painting. Carefully she set it at the foot of the bed, standing behind it, holding its edges very carefully.
John gazed at the painting, saying nothing as his eyes roamed over it, looking as if he’d just been reunited with a very dear friend that he had no idea how to react to.
‘This painting,’ Rose told him over the brim of the canvas, ‘or at least the sketch for this painting, is the reason why Frasier looked all over the country for you.’ She glanced briefly at Frasier, before returning her attention to John. ‘The reason why I met him, the reason that I came here, the reason that I ever found you. This painting that I know you never forgot, because you painted it again.’
Father and daughter held each other’s gaze, saying more in that moment of silence to one another than they could with a thousand words. This was Rose’s proof that she had never forgotten John, and his symbol to prove that she had always been in his thoughts, even when he himself had been lost.
‘This isn’t chocolate-box art, Dad,’ Rose said. ‘This wasn’t painted for money, or fame. It was a moment between this little girl and her father. I’ve always kept it. No matter what else was happening, not even when Frasier wanted it, and most of me wanted him to have it. I kept this safe because I looked at it and I felt the love you had for me when you painted it. It was the one thing that I couldn’t ever bear to part with because it was the one little bit of you that I had.’
John stared at the painting for a long time before speaking. ‘You were sitting on the windowsill, looking out of the window with the sunlight in your hair. I did a quick sketch to remember the tilt of your head, the way you crossed your legs and posed your hands, but most of that came from memory and from the emotion, the love I felt for you in that second. You’re right, I never forgot that moment between us, even though sometimes it was unbearable to recall.’
‘And this image is repeated,’ Frasier told Rose, risking John’s wrath, ‘again and again, not just in the work I showed you at the gallery, but in the works in the barn too.’
‘Is that true, Dad?’ Rose asked him softly, carefully lifting the painting off the bed and setting it against the wall.
John nodded, dropping his gaze from her. ‘It’s hardly enough, though, is it? One memory of love to live with in an entire lifetime. I am so ashamed, Rose, so very ashamed of the life that I have led. I don’t want to turn that shame into glory.’
‘But what if you turned it into a story?’ Rose said, returning to his side. ‘A path for me to follow. A path that will lead me to a better understanding of you? And think of all the organising, and deciding you’ll have to do. You’ll be able to boss Frasier around mercilessly and be as difficult and as obstinate as you like, and I just think the more you have to occupy your mind, the …’ Rose stumbled to a faltering stop, realising what she was about to say.
‘The longer I will live,’ John finished for her. ‘Is that what this is about?’
‘I’ve only just found you,’ Rose said. ‘Maddie barely knows you. I want every second I can get.’
‘Well, then,’ John said, taking her hand, ‘why didn’t you just say that in the first place?’
It had been a very long day, which Rose was looking forward to seeing the back of by the time she finally said goodbye to Jenny, tucked Maddie up in the boxroom and ushered Tilda, who’d arrived late afternoon, probably in a bid to give Rose time with her father, into John’s room for time alone with her husband.
After everyone had sampled Rose’s lasagne together, and Tilda was in John’s room, Rose came downstairs to the heart-aching sight of Frasier sitting on the sofa, his arm slung along the length of the back, as if he were issuing an invitation for her to nestle in the crook of his arm. He wasn’t doing that, of course, she thought sadly, he wasn’t doing any such thing, so taking a glass of wine that Frasier had poured for her from the sideboard, Rose went and sat opposite him, in her father’s armchair.
‘How was it, talking to the police?’ Frasier asked her. Just after lunch, Rose had been as good as her word and gone down to meet the officer at the B & B, telling Maddie she was popping out for some boring old shopping.
‘It was difficult,’ Rose admitted. ‘The hardest part is seeing the expression on someone else’s face when you try to explain to them what life was like. I can see exactly what they’re thinking. They are thinking, poor stupid cow. Why didn’t she leave him at the first sign of trouble? What they don’t know is there isn’t a first sign of trouble. It’s like that experiment you hear about, when you are a child. That if you put a frog in a pan of cold water, and gently heat it, you can boil it to death without it ever noticing. That’s what it was like. Richard was ever so slowly smothering me, and I got so used to the lack of oxygen, I didn’t notice.’ Rose took a deep gulp of wine. ‘Still, she has my statement now; it’s on record. And Jenny’s too. Thank God they didn’t feel the need to talk to Maddie. And I do feel better. I feel like I have really made a start on taking back control of my life again.’
Rose smiled at him across the small space between them, which represented such a huge gulf. ‘Thank you for being here.’
‘I honestly don’t have anywhere else to be,’ Frasier said. ‘Although I might just have to spend a little money on a new sofa if I’m going to be here for a while. I might even go crazy and make it a sofa bed.’
They were both silent for a moment, Frasier lost in his own thoughts as Rose allowed herself secretly to wonder what it would be like to take Frasier by the hand and lead him upstairs to her bed.
‘You never really said what it was like,’ Frasier said, when Rose finally found the courage to look up at him. ‘I knew your marriage to Richard was a bad one, and that you felt trapped and unhappy, but I didn’t realise quite how awful it was, the things he … put you through.’
Rose shrugged, looking deep into the glass of wine. ‘It’s not something you really want to talk about. I feel so stupid, so weak, so pathetic.’
‘Pathetic is the last thing you are,’ Frasier said. ‘You are strong, impressively so. Resilient, stoic, amazing.’
Dearest Rose Page 36