Rosie Hogarth

by Alexander Baron

  “I’ve told her you’re coming downstairs. So get your clothes on.”

  “But I don’t —”

  “Yes, you do. There’s a bit more explaining to be done round here before I’m satisfied.”

  “Will you come down with us?”

  “Too true I will.” She sat on the edge of the bed and watched placidly while he dressed. “Ready? By the right, quick march!” She followed him downstairs.

  Jack led the way into the parlour, said, “Good morning,” to Mick, turned an unhappy grin on Rose and greeted her with a vague ah-ha-ing sound in the roof of his mouth.

  Rose sat in the armchair by the fireplace, holding her handbag on her lap, leaning forward slightly, her expression composed and disdainful as if, whatever might follow, she had no intention of becoming interested. When she looked at Joyce it was with a faint, patronising smile. Joyce in return, studied Rose in a calm, unafraid manner, her face as blank of either friendship or hostility as if she were gazing through a shop window. Rose leaned back, put her handbag down on the floor and allowed herself to sink into a languid pose, with her head resting to one side and one hand dangling over the armrest of the chair. Joyce sat down beside Jack, watching him sidelong like an animal’s keeper. Jack uttered a preparatory grunt, but Mick spoke first.

  “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “All right.” A hollowness in Jack’s voice showed that his thoughts and his speech were following separate tracks.

  “You’re looking better. I rang the hospital. Bernie’s had a quiet night.” He smiled grimly. “That’s more than I’ve had. Do you feel well enough to stand a bit of straight talking?”

  Joyce said, “He does.”

  “Good! It’s my belief that the time has come for it. This young lady thinks so too.”

  Rose directed a frown of contradiction at him. “Or perhaps I should admit,” he added, “that we had a difference of opinion on the subject. Quite a long one. It lasted from eleven o’clock last night till two o’clock this morning. However, I made it clear that I was going to hold this little conference whether or no, and my daughter decided that she might as well come along — to hold, as you might say, a watching brief on her own behalf. You’ll see why in a little while. First of all, let’s get one thing out of the way.” He handed Jack a slip of paper.

  Jack looked at it, saw that it was a cheque for a hundred pounds and said to Rose, “I don’t want your bloody money.”

  Rose glanced idly at him and turned her head towards her father again.

  Mick said, “It’s not her bloody money. It’s mine. Look at the signature.”

  Joyce interjected, “I’ll have that.” She took the cheque from Jack, folded it and held it in her lap, between her fingertips. “Thank you, Mick.” She did not favour Jack with even a glance of explanation, and Jack made no motion of protest.

  “You might like to know,” Mick said, “that it wasn’t for her own benefit that she helped herself to your money.”

  “Does it matter?” Rose murmured.

  “Although whether you’ll think any better of her when you know where it did go, I can’t say.” Mick rose, walked to the window, looked out at the street for a few moments and turned suddenly to face them. “Jack, I’ll be frank with you. I don’t care a hang what sort of shenanigans you get mixed up in. I don’t give a damn what you know or what you don’t know. But there’s one thing I do care about — and that’s Kate. That woman loved you as a son. I want you to know her as I know her, and to remember her as I do. I’ll not have you talking about her the way you did last night. That’s why I’ve come here this morning.” He walked towards Jack and looked down at him like a prosecutor. “Jack, I wonder how much you know about people? How you judge them? Or whether you’re able to judge them at all? I wonder if you’ve learned that the only way to judge people is by balancing what they give against what they take? Kate gave a thousand times more than she took. You’ve good cause to know that, of all people, and to be grateful for it.” He had returned to the window, and looked out as he talked. “I’ll tell you about Kate. And I won’t leave anything out. You’d have less chance of understanding if I did. I wasn’t the first man she went with besides her husband. Not by a long chalk. She married him in nineteen-twelve. They weren’t a good match. He was a quiet, stay-at-home chap, didn’t notice she was there most of the time. She — well, you can imagine what she was like at twenty. And there she was, stuck in his kitchen, day and night. No more sing-songs up The Lamb, no more dancing, no more evenings up in the gallery at Collins’, no more swings and roundabouts on Hampstead Heath — he didn’t care tuppence for ’em, and he didn’t see why she should. She had his mother glaring at her all the time like an old witch. Scrubbing and slaving, and three kids in a row. That was her life with him.

  “Mind you, she looked after him all right. She was faithful. She was fond of him. She kept his house spotless. She was as meek and mild as he could wish. She got downhearted sometimes, she’d long for a bit of life, but she wouldn’t let herself brood over it, not while there was housework to keep her occupied. In nineteen-fifteen he joined up, and the loneliness, even with the kids, just about finished her. She stuck it for a year; then she went off the deep end. He was in France, she was on war work, so his mother couldn’t keep an eye on her. I came into her life, as they say, in ’seventeen — on a ten-day leave — but I wasn’t the only one, and she made no bones about it. We never took each other seriously. It was just what she called a lark. And that’s how it was with her — till he came home in nineteen-eighteen, with his legs paralysed.

  “She could have tried to shove him off into a hospital, or a home, or one of those places. She wouldn’t. She knew he only had a few years, and she said he had a right to spend them in his own home. After he came back she didn’t look at another man. She nursed him like a baby. She pushed him about in his wheelchair. She was sweet and loving to him. She spent half her time slaving for him and the kids, and the other half out charring to bring in a bit of extra money. Day and night she was at it. She was wearing herself out. She said to me once, ‘I deserve it, Mick, God forgive me! It’s the least I can do.’ For a year she was like that. She was cleaning for me at The Lamb. She wouldn’t let me come near her. She went like stone if I tried to touch her. It says something if I tell you that even I gave up trying. Then, one evening, she’d been dusting my parlour, I was doing my accounts at the desk, taking no notice of her, and she said, ‘Goodnight, Mick.’ “Goodnight,” says I, not even turning round. I went on writing. Something seemed wrong, I couldn’t tell what it was. Then I realised, I hadn’t heard her go. I turned round. There she was sitting on the edge of the sofa, looking at me, a little bit scared, a little bit defiant. I stood up. She said, ‘That’s the way it is, Mick,’ and she came across the room to me.

  “A year later Tony was born, the boy, the one that died the year Kate first saw you. Nobody knew what was going on, except her husband, and he — it was a funny thing with him — he turned a blind eye to it. He used to talk to her as kindly as ever. When she put her coat on of an evening and said she was going to slip out for a bit, he’d just give her a sad sort of smile and go back to his reading.

  “Me? I’ve had a few in my time, but there’s not one of them I’ve ever lost my head over — except for her. I went mad over that woman. I worshipped her. I wanted to rave when she was out of my sight. I begged her to leave him. I offered her money, everything she could wish for. She used to shut her mouth, and shake her head, and not say a word. And she went on looking after him. Well, that was the way we carried on. I couldn’t look at another woman. She had no eyes for any other man. We’d both found the one we wanted. And still she wouldn’t leave him.

  “Then he began to change. I think it was the pain. He was suffering agonies. He knew he hadn’t long, and his mind began to go. You know, they get full of despair, jealousy, self-pity. They think they’re being ill-treated if they’re not coddled day and night. They imagine everyone
’s trying to hurry them into their graves. You try to pity them, but it gets harder and harder to keep your patience. She stood for it. She never answered back. He used to get in a frenzy, drive himself mad trying to provoke her. She’d just stand there like a statue. He used to order her about — get this, get that, no, not this, take this back, take that back, hurry up, shut up, clear out. He’d sit brooding in his chair for hours, glaring at her, thinking up every dirty, humiliating demand he could try her with. She used to obey him without a word. He’d wet himself, like a baby, in his chair, just to see her kneeling and cleaning up. The worse his health got, the worse he tormented her. He’d jeer at her, call her all the filthiest names he could think of. He’d hit her when she came near enough, catch hold of her and pinch her and twist her arms. If I tried to say anything when I saw the bruises she’d put her hand over my mouth. I wanted to murder him. She begged me to pity him. She said, ‘Think what he’s suffering,’ and there were tears in her eyes. And they talk about the holy saints!

  “He was always threatening to show her up in front of the neighbours, but he never did. I suppose he was ashamed to admit he wasn’t a man any more. He used to swear he’d divorce her. I wish to God he had! He needed her too much to let her go — or perhaps he wanted to go on punishing her. She said he loved her right up to the end. She said that was why he tortured her. Maybe — I don’t know! Anyway, even when Rose was born in nineteen twenty-two, he didn’t do anything about it. He died a little over a year later.”

  Jack fidgeted, and was glad that he did not have to meet Mick’s eyes. “What about the children? Didn’t they catch on?”

  The languid insolence had gone out of Rose’s attitude while her father was talking. She looked sombre and subdued. She said quietly, “Nancy knew.”

  “Nancy was the only one that ever knew,” Mick said. “He used to leave Kate alone when the boys were there. I don’t know why. She said he was afraid of losing their sympathy by letting them see him ill-treat her. Anyway, they were very young and they were out in the street most of the time. Nancy wasn’t. She lived in the kitchen with her mother. Poor kiddie, she was fat as a little pig even at that time. She was very shy and sensitive, and she was afraid to play in the street. She got over it later, but at that age she lived in Kate’s arms. She must have been terrified by what she heard, but she couldn’t have understood very much of it. It wasn’t till later on — oh, three or four years after, when she was about fourteen — that Kate told her everything. They were very close together, those two. More like sisters than mother and daughter. It was a great comfort to Kate, having someone she could talk to like that, and have a bit of a cry with on the quiet, sometimes.”

  “And Rose,” Jack said. He looked at her. “I suppose you knew, too, later on.” Rose shook her head.

  “Rose never knew a thing,” Mick said. “I wanted her to. I used to tell Kate, ‘She’s my only daughter, and I want her to know it.’ ‘No,’ Kate used to say, ‘I’ve brought them up as his children, and I’ve taught them to respect his memory. I’m not going to undo that.’ Do you know when Rose found out? The night her mother died. She collapsed in the street when she heard the news, and I took her back to The Lamb, and that night I told her.” He smiled briefly at his daughter. “Not that it did me much good. I wanted her to come and live with me, but she wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I shall live my own life,’ she said. So I’ve had to content myself with renting a flat for her and giving her an allowance, and having a friendly evening with her now and again. Well, that’s something, I suppose. At least she knows who I am.”

  Joyce was the only one who was not visibly under the spell of Mick’s story. She asked, in an unrelenting voice, “Why didn’t you and Kate get married?”

  “I’m a married man, Joyce, and a Catholic. My wife left me many years ago — not without reason, to do her justice. And for a lifetime since, she’s had the pleasure of combining religion and revenge. I asked her a hundred times but she wouldn’t divorce me. I went to lawyers galore, but they couldn’t help. I offered her well nigh every penny I had. She wouldn’t listen.

  “And without we were married, Kate wouldn’t come to live with me. She wouldn’t hear of taking money from me, except for the kids when she wanted to buy them some clothes or take them away on a holiday. She wouldn’t even give up scrubbing floors for a living till the boys were old enough to leave school and start bringing home wages. Later on she let me treat her a bit more generously: I gave her a present now and again. I helped her out when she was short. In nineteen thirty-nine we went away for a holiday together, for the first time. But she wouldn’t take a regular allowance from me. She wouldn’t let me buy her a nice little house. She wouldn’t move in with me. It was the kids she was thinking of. ‘Say the word, Mick,’ she said, “and I’ll walk naked in the Lord Mayor’s Show. But I’m not going to let my children see their mother living in sin. And I’m not going to give the neighbours a chance to sneer at them because of me. I’d rather leave my children a good name than anything else in the world.’ So for twenty years we went on seeing each other on the quiet, like a couple of criminals. That woman was made to share a home with a chap like me. She’d have been set free to live. She’d have had all the good times she was born for. But she turned her back on it, because she wanted to bring her children up respectable. Funny, isn’t it? You wouldn’t think a woman like that would have feared convention. But there you are!”

  Jack was silent. A host of fragmentary and hitherto unexplained memories were coming together in his mind like jigsaw pieces: Mick coming to the Orphanage with Kate: Mick arranging for Jack’s adoption: Mick securing Jack an apprenticeship: the photograph of the child Tony on Mick’s mantelpiece: Kate on holiday in nineteen thirty-nine and Mick “out of town on business”: Kate penniless but always finding money for the children’s pleasures and necessities, for Chris’s illness and for Chris’s grave: Kate’s mysterious appearance, late on one remembered Spring night, in the street near the side door of The Lamb: Gran Hogarth’s outbursts and Nancy’s silences. All these and a hundred other clues to the past had been there in his memory, but his memory had preferred to ignore them, and to content itself with the shimmering illusions he had demanded from it as a refuge from the harsh present. He looked at Rose with a shamed smile. “And I thought you was his fancy bit!”

  “No.” There was no indulgence in her voice. “And I’m nobody else’s fancy bit, either.”

  Joyce uttered a low, “Ha!” Rose gave her a negligent glance. Joyce glared back.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Jack said, with a stupid laugh. “I can believe anything now. After today I reckon black’s white, an’ the Orient’s a cert for Wembley.”

  They waited for Rose to speak, but she remained silent, looking at her father.

  “She thinks you can’t be trusted,” Mick said. “I say you can. Am I right? Will you promise that nothing that’s said in here this morning will go any further?”

  Jack stared. “Suits me.” Mick looked interrogatively at Joyce. She nodded scornfully.

  “My daughter,” Mick said, “is a revolutionary.” He rolled the V with savage exaggeration. “A what?” Jack exclaimed.

  “A revolutionary. A Red. An enemy of the state. Or should I say —” his smile to Rose was embittered “— a saviour of the people?”

  Rose smiled faintly. Joyce laughed and said, “I’m not surprised.”

  “Well, I’ll be —!” Jack’s voice cracked into a bleat of incredulity. “What for?”

  Rose sat smiling and tapping the points of her shoes together. “Don’t start her off on that,” Mick said. “She’s told me often enough, and if she tells me a hundred times more I’ll still think she’s crazy.”

  “Anyway!” Jack was grimacing with the effort to understand. “What’s all the hush-hush about? Old Prawn’s a Bolshie, and a few others round here, and they don’t hide it.”

  “That’s different,” Rose said. “My work is confidential. I can’t talk about it.” />
  “You’d better,” Mick said, “or he’ll think you’re after burning down Buckingham Palace.”

  Rose frowned down at her shoes and went on tapping them together. “Very well!” She looked up. “Many of our people work for the Government. Scientists. Senior Civil Servants. If they’re found out they lose their jobs. They have to remain undercover members. They can’t belong to Party branches, where we know that police agents are active. We can’t even bring them together in groups of their own. It would only need one spy or informer among them and they’d all be identified. So I keep in touch with each of them, separately. I meet them, discuss their problems with them, put them in touch with others where it’s essential, help them to plan their work, and above all — since they’re mostly well off — I collect all the money I can from them for the Party funds. Some of them make very big sacrifices. That’s all there is to it. There’s nothing illegal about it. I don’t ask them to tell me anything they shouldn’t. But if I became known for what I am, the police would only have to shadow me and I’d lead them to every one of our people in turn.”

  “Well, strike a light!” Jack muttered. “So that’s why you’re always going about with chaps. And asking them for money.”

  “I’m glad the penny’s dropped.”

  “You mean —?” Jack was still struggling to understand. “You ain’t —?”

  “I don’t live like a nun, if that’s what you mean —”

  Joyce whispered very audibly to Jack, “I don’t doubt that.”

  “— and I’ve no intention of sobbing out the sad story of my life to you. But if you’re wondering whether I’m a gold-digging glamour girl, the answer is no.”

  Jack became belligerent. “Then what about my money?”

  “Oh, that?” She seemed quite unconcerned. “You’ve had it back. Aren’t you satisfied?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Well, you’ll have to be, won’t you?”