The power of love . . .
Rosie continued to cuddle Annie close as she gazed unseeing across the room, and like a small child Annie had gone off to sleep without her next dose of morphine and slept all the night through until Christmas morning.
It was another six weeks before Annie died, and despite what Dr Meadows had feared the morphine went a long way to controlling the pain right to the end. It had been expected Annie would become comatose but her will to remain with Rosie as long as she could triumphed over her mortal body. She died looking up into Rosie’s face and cradled lovingly in her arms, and in the last minutes her face was wiped clean of all pain and anxiety and became that of a young girl again, a peaceful young girl; and such was her expression that it went some way to quieten the agony Rosie felt at her departure.
The announcement of Annie’s death was almost lost in the one thousand people a week dying from the influenza virus that was sweeping the country and creating havoc, but to Rosie, and Jessie, and Annie’s family and other friends, the world was less rich without her indomitable presence.
There was a special message in the little card attached to the wreath of pure white roses that Rosie laid on her friend’s coffin.
Your purity was never besmirched in His eyes, and now you are like a young girl again, washed clean in the blood of His Son and forever lovely.
I love you and I miss you.
Your Rosie.
Part Five
Tomorrow
Chapter Twenty-Two
The last twelve months had seen a great change in Rosie, and when she thought about the woman she had been before Annie’s death it was as though that girl was a stranger to her.
Oh, she’d all but raised a family when her father and the lads had died, she had married Zachariah and borne him a son, she’d been a friend and comforter to Flora in her troubles and a support to her mother, but she knew now that Annie’s revelation about her childhood and the conception of her youngest son had opened a door in her mind that had hitherto been closed. Before then, she had seen the world very much in stark black and white. Even when Molly had left them, and she had faced the fact that her sister had embraced the oldest profession in the world, she had still retained an element of naivety deep inside.
It embarrassed her now to think about how she had blamed Davey, if only in part, for Zachariah’s death. She had transferred her own feelings of guilt to his shoulders and she knew he’d guessed that. They had never spoken of it, however, and in the first few weeks after Annie’s passing, when she had been quite desolate, Flora and Davey had been wonderful to her - like a sister and brother in fact.
Looking back now Rosie was sure she must have imagined those times when she thought Davey was still in love with her before Zachariah’s death. It made her hot with mortification when she thought about it. He was devoted to Flora, quite devoted, and Flora was unashamedly madly in love with him.
Flora called to see her several times a week - her friend was Erik’s favourite playmate and the two of them would disappear into the nursery for hours on end - but Davey only accompanied her on the odd occasion, maybe two or three times a month, and then he was always friendly and amiable. Nevertheless Rosie never felt at ease with him and she blamed herself totally for this. If she could have torn the feeling she had for him - which she had acknowledged was still there after Annie had died - out of her heart she would have done so like a shot.
It was wrong, self-indulgent, and she had so much to be thankful for, she told herself constantly. She had her son - and more than that, she had tasted great joy in her all-too-short marriage. Zachariah had been a wonderful man, she would never meet the like of him again, and therefore she was content to remain single for the rest of her days.
There was her voluntary work among the forty boys at the Sunderland Orphan Asylum; that kept her busy, as well as her half-days helping at the Royal Institute for the Blind in Villiers Street. The Orphan Asylum’s little inmates were trained for seafaring careers. In the playground was an old wreck called the Victoria that the boys loved to play on, and Rosie always considered it an honour that on sight of her the children would leave the boat and run pell mell to her side, swarming around her like small monkeys. Of course the sweets and little treats that invariably appeared out of her bag might have had something to do with it, but the boys loved to sit on her lap, too, or hold her hand or walk with her, and the once or twice she had taken Erik to meet them there had been great excitement. The Asylum had a little band, comprised of some twenty children, and on one of the occasions she had taken Erik with her they had played for him, which had necessitated her buying the toddler a tin whistle on the way home to Roker.
On the three or four half-days a week she worked, Rosie paid a neighbour to take care of Erik. Ellen rented a room in a house a few doors away and had a baby daughter a few months older than Erik, which had been the means of the two women first getting to know each other. Ellen’s husband had been drowned in a fishing accident shortly before Zachariah had died, and the young widow took in washing and ironing, besides cleaning several houses in The Terrace and elsewhere, to make ends meet.
Ellen was fiercely independent and Rosie had recognized a kindred spirit immediately, and as their children had become great friends so had they. To date Ellen had refused Rosie’s offers to come and live with her, which were made at regular intervals, but the more than generous payments Rosie made for the hours Ellen took care of Erik had taken a great load off the other woman’s shoulders.
And Rosie hadn’t given up her plans of moving out of the town altogether, they had merely been shelved as she had adjusted to her loss. Now, at the back of her mind, the proposal included Ellen, and possibly Annie’s sons who were still out of work and desperate. With that in mind she had bought a little car, a modest three-seater Citroën, and taken excursions into the surrounding countryside, the while keeping her eyes open for a suitable property. She was determined she was going to do something with Zachariah’s legacy, she knew he would have approved of that, and a farm could provide so many jobs and a secure future for her son as he grew into manhood.
She had the means now. Jessie had married her Joseph in the spring of 1927, three months after Annie had died, and at that point Rosie had sold the house in Benton Street along with the other properties Zachariah had owned - a house in the middle of Ward Terrace in Hendon and another in Ryhope Road in Grangetown.
Part of the proceeds she had sent over the water to Sally and Mick. Their small farm was thriving but in dire need of new equipment and modernization, and it had pleased Rosie to be able to help her friends with a substantial gift.
She had received a rapturous letter thanking her from Sally, the contents of which had seemed to bring the tall, gangling woman in front of her and made her chuckle.
Mick’s still loving every minute here, Sally had written in her barely readable scrawl, and his Irish brogue is now so thick you can’t understand a word he says. This week alone we have had a horse with pus in his hoof, a cow with a severe impaction of the rumen, and a sow with a blockage (I won’t tell you where!), and the local vet is opening a new bank account. Mick smells of pigs as well as horses now, and I’m sure when this baby is born it will have two little hoofs and a swishing tail.
Sally had been five months pregnant at the time, and had had a son at the end of September. The two women wrote to each other nearly every week, and Rosie looked forward to receiving Sally’s letters, which were never dull.
At the end of every letter Sally would repeat her invitation for Rosie and Erik to pay them a visit, but as yet Rosie hadn’t taken her friend up on it. She would, she told herself each time she read Sally’s warm words that seemed to bring her so close she could reach out and touch her, but when Erik was just a little older. Maybe in the summer.
So all in all her life was full and busy, and as satisfying as it could be without her beloved Zachariah. Now Rosie was sitting in her sitting room preparatory to retiring for the
night. She glanced up from the glowing fire into which she’d been staring for some time and glanced round the softly shadowed room. It was almost eighteen months since Zachariah had died - the day after tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and she had her mother and Joseph and Hannah arriving in the morning to stay for a few days, and Ellen and little Mary were coming on Boxing Day when they returned from visiting relations; yet at times she still felt utterly desolate at his loss.
And since Annie’s death, as her new knowledge of herself had continued to grow and grow, she now recognized that an element of this feeling was guilt because she hadn’t loved Zachariah enough when he was with her. Her one comfort was that he hadn’t known that other secret passion had continued and taken some of the love that should rightfully have been all his as her husband. And when the moments of self-accusation came she was able to answer them with the recognition that she had done what was right in the impossible situation she had found herself in at that time. Which was all anyone could do, wasn’t it? You couldn’t force your heart to feel a certain way just because your head told you you must. Love, unfortunately, wasn’t like that. It found its own outlet however much you tried to channel it in one direction. She made a deep obeisance with her head in answer to the thought and rose to her feet, her carriage straight and determined as she walked from the room.
Christmas Eve dawned bright but very cold, the frost-painted shrubs and trees in the garden holding an exquisite beauty all of their own in the crystallized air.
Because it was a Sunday, Jessie had insisted on dragging them all to church that morning, and now, as Rosie peered out of the kitchen window and drank in the frozen scene outside the warmth of the house, she knew she was glad she had gone. The Catholic church had been full and the half-remembered prayers from her childhood, when Jessie had taken her and the other children on high days and holidays, had comforted her. The Christ child had been lying in his crib, the shepherds had been kneeling in mute adoration, and the smell of incense and the hushed atmosphere had made her feel five years old again.
She could hear shouts of laughter and Erik’s high-pitched squeals from the sitting room, and her lips curved in answer to the infectious sound as she turned from the window and walked over to the blackleaded range to check the Sunday roast. How Zachariah would have loved his son. At twenty months old Erik was a bundle of energy and into everything, and the absolute image of his handsome father. Everyone who came into contact with the child loved him, and he could twist his grandma and young aunty round his little finger. He was tired now though, he was long overdue for his morning nap, and he would start to get fractious and unsteady on his legs before long.
The thought moved Rosie across the kitchen and out into the hall, and when she reached the warmth of the sitting room it was just in time to see Erik, his round baby face red with excitement at all the attention he was getting, attempt to turn a circle as he waved his arms in time to the nursery rhyme her mother and Joseph and Hannah were singing.
As Rosie realized what was about to happen she leapt forward but he had already tottered backwards, banging against the fancy chiffonier and causing a heavy cut-crystal vase to overbalance and smash down on his head. In a moment there was blood everywhere, and as she reached the child and whisked him up into her arms his screaming rent the air. Joseph was already reaching for his car keys, for the cut on the baby’s head was gaping and would certainly need stitches.
The roads were lethal with black ice and Joseph drove at a snail’s pace that made Rosie feel she could have walked the distance in less time. She was sitting in the front seat with Erik cradled in her arms wrapped in a blanket, her mother and Hannah having stayed at the house, and the towel she was holding to the baby’s forehead was already soaked when they had gone only a mile or two. Erik had fallen asleep as soon as the car started, whether due to tiredness or a result of the bang on his head Rosie wasn’t sure, but then, when they were passing over the Wearmouth Bridge and he was violently sick, Rosie really began to panic. By the time they reached the Sunderland Infirmary Erik had vomited twice more and didn’t seem to be aware of his surroundings, and Rosie felt a fear so deep and consuming that it made any other she had experienced in her life trifling by comparison.
They were kindness itself at the Infirmary, but Rosie already knew she wouldn’t be returning home that day. It was a fight to get the doctor to allow her to stay at the side of Erik’s narrow iron cot in the children’s ward, but when Joseph took the doctor aside (she heard snatches of their conversation such as, ‘. . . widow, child is all she has’, and ‘will be amply rewarded with a generous donation’), a straight-backed chair was brought for her along with that British panacea for all ills, a hot cup of tea.
The long afternoon crept by. Joseph had gone back to the house once he had established Rosie wouldn’t be returning home that day, but just before teatime Jessie appeared at the door of the ward with a basket containing freshly cut sandwiches and a container of lukewarm onion soup. Rosie tried to force a few mouthfuls down, but it was beyond her. Jessie stayed for an hour but her fear of the hospital was only a little less than Annie’s had been, and after sixty minutes of Jessie’s twisting and turning on her chair and nervous bursts of chatter followed by long uncomfortable silences, Rosie sent her home. Erik was sleeping most of the time and was aware of very little, but the once or twice he had recognized his grandmother Jessie’s distraught behaviour had made him worse.
‘We’ll be home tomorrow, Mam, don’t worry.’ Rosie had walked to the door of the small ward with her mother and signalled to Joseph and Hannah, who were waiting in the corridor outside, to come and take her. ‘We’ll probably be back in time for Hannah and Erik to open their presents together.’ They were brave words and the four of them looked at each other for a moment before Rosie said, in answer to the expression screwing up her mother’s face, ‘Don’t, Mam, please don’t. I’ve got to take it a minute at a time and be strong for Erik and believe he is going to be home tomorrow.’
‘I’m sorry, lass. I’m sorry.’ Jessie’s voice had been quivering and Joseph had hurried his wife and stepdaughter down the dark, green-painted passageway after an encouraging pat of Rosie’s arm and a reassuring, ‘I’ll take care of things, Rosie lass, don’t you worry.’
Don’t worry. Don’t worry? What stupid things are said at times like these. Rosie felt suddenly tired, but it was an exhaustion of the spirit rather than the flesh. She couldn’t take any more. Are you listening, God? She lifted her face to the whitewashed ceiling of the corridor as she continued to stand just outside the ward doors. I can’t take any more. If anything happens to my baby, to my precious beautiful baby, I’m finished. It will be the end, it will. She lowered her eyes, shutting them tightly and biting hard on her lower lip.
She had lost count of how many times Erik had vomited during the afternoon and when he emerged, for a few minutes, from the strange sleep which seemed almost like unconsciousness it was always to crying and moaning with the pain in his head. Zachariah had had a bang on his head. What if there was some inherent weakness in Erik’s makeup that made him particularly vulnerable? It was possible . . .
And this was Christmas Eve. Of all the times for it to happen, for her baby to fall sick, how could He allow it on the night His Son came into the world? ‘Take everything I have, God.’ She muttered the words out loud in the form of a prayer, still with her eyes tightly closed. ‘Take everything, every last penny, but leave me my son. I don’t care about the money or the house or any of it, and I’ll never ask you for anything else as long as I live. I promise.’
‘Rosie?’
Her eyes snapped open and she found herself staring at Flora and Davey, and then Davey said again, ‘Rosie, lass. Are you all right? Where is he?’
Davey had been gripped by a terrible fear for Erik as they had walked round the corner of the passageway and seen her standing there, her head bent and her face as white as a sheet. In all the years he had known Rosie, even in the caustic afterma
th of Zachariah’s death, he had never seen her shoulders bowed in defeat or such an expression of agony on her face, and now the unexpected defencelessness made him want to gather her up in his arms and smother her face with kisses.
‘He . . . he’s in there.’ Rosie managed to lift her hand to the ward but she didn’t take her eyes off Davey’s face. In this moment of consuming need he was the person in all the world she most wanted with her, and for a moment she was quite oblivious to Flora’s presence. ‘He’s so small and so poorly.’
‘I know, I know.’ And now Davey followed through on his initial impulse to take Rosie into his arms; he gently drew her close, bending his head and murmuring soothing words of comfort into the fine silk of her hair as he endeavoured to comfort the woman he loved.
They could only have stood together like that for a moment or two and then Rosie straightened and drew away, and Davey made no effort to restrain her. ‘How . . . Who told you I was here?’ Rosie was talking directly to Flora now and she took her friend’s hands adding, ‘Oh, I’m so pleased to see you, you don’t know how pleased.’
‘We called at the house this afternoon with Erik’s Christmas present, didn’t your mother tell you?’
Flora’s voice held nothing but gentle concern, and when Rosie shook her head saying, ‘She’s in such a state herself she doesn’t know if she’s on foot or horseback,’ and Davey’s voice came brisk and even as he nodded and said, ‘That’s understandable of course, she is Erik’s grandma when all’s said and done,’ Flora didn’t look at her fiancé but kept her eyes on Rosie.
And in the few minutes that followed before Rosie went back to Erik - visiting time had finished so Flora and Davey weren’t allowed in the ward - Flora didn’t once glance Davey’s way.
Erik remained in the Sunderland Infirmary for four more days before the doctors were satisfied Rosie could take him home. The enforced rest meant he seemed to have twice his normal energy in the days that followed, and he ran Rosie ragged, but she was so thrilled he had fully recovered she didn’t even notice. He was very proud of his ‘war wound’ as Joseph had christened the scar on the child’s forehead, and when Jessie’s husband bought Erik a tiny soldier’s hat - it was really a play tram conductor’s cap, but Joseph had adapted it for his purposes - and whittled a small gun out of a piece of wood, Erik was transported to seventh heaven. He spent hours strutting around and giving orders in his baby jargon to all and sundry, and insisted on sleeping with both the cap and the gun at his side every night.
Reach for Tomorrow Page 36