A Daughter's Duty

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Marina, there’s someone here to see you,’ said Jeff, ushering in Bob. ‘Dr Morris did you say your name was?’

  ‘That’s right. You’re Marina Morland?’ Bob held out his hand to Marina and, looking surprised, she took it. ‘I wonder, can we go somewhere where we can talk?’

  ‘Use the sitting room, I’m off now,’ suggested Jeff. He was wearing a Sunderland supporters’ scarf, red and white with a touch of black, and everyone supposed he was going to the match early. In reality he was earlier than he had intended to be for his expedition but it was nowhere near Roker Park or anywhere else in Sunderland he planned to go.

  It was cold in the sitting room for the fire wasn’t normally lit except on high days and holidays but Marina switched on a tiny two-barred electric fire. They sat opposite each other, Bob thinking she looked a nice, ordinary girl, obviously newly married, and Marina completely baffled as to what this good-looking young doctor wanted with her. Had she seen him before? She waited for him to explain what he wanted, thinking that if he didn’t hurry up her mother would come bursting in asking did he want tea or something, but in reality because she couldn’t contain her curiosity.

  ‘I am making enquiries about Rose Sharpe,’ he began, and light dawned for Marina.

  ‘Oh, yes, you were one of the doctors talking about her the other night, weren’t you? In the hospital, I mean,’ Marina said eagerly. ‘Do you know where she is?’ She frowned as an alarming thought occurred to her. ‘She’s all right, isn’t she? Nothing’s happened to her? Or the baby –’

  ‘You do know her? And you knew about the baby?’

  ‘Yes, of course, she’s my best friend.’

  ‘And yet you don’t know where she is now?’

  ‘She went to London,’ said Marina, on the defensive against the implied criticism. ‘Oh, please, tell me, is she all right?’

  ‘She is now. She lost the baby.’

  ‘Oh, thank God!’ Marina gasped and meant about the baby too, Bob could have sworn. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She’s in Hartlepool.’

  Marina jumped to her feet and ran to the door and out on to the street. ‘Jeff! Jeff!’ he heard her calling. ‘Rose is all right! She’s in –’ But her voice trailed away and after a moment she came back into the sitting room and sat down. ‘He’s already gone,’ she said. ‘But Hartlepool … I can’t believe she’s that close. Tell me about her, please. Did she speak to you about me?’

  ‘She gave your name as next of kin.’ Bob had to be careful now, felt he couldn’t give away anything that Rose wanted kept a secret, but she had given Marina’s name, hadn’t she? In the end he told her about Rose and her coming into the hospital, about her attack of pneumonia and how ill she’d been. And how she seemed to be terrified of her father and her aunt, worried for her small brother and sister. And Marina in her turn told him about Alf. All about Alf. It was such a relief to say it to someone.

  ‘You won’t repeat this to anyone, will you?’ she asked anxiously when she’d finished, half wishing she hadn’t said anything about it all but there was something about this young doctor that made you want to confide in him. There was something so honest and trustworthy about him.

  ‘No, not while Rose doesn’t want anyone to know, I won’t,’ he said, and his voice sounded amazingly normal in his own ears for inside he was blazingly angry, truly blazing. There was such a fire of rage within him that it threatened to consume him altogether. He couldn’t sit still. He got to his feet and walked over to the window, looking out on to the street and the row of houses directly opposite, all exactly the same with their white-stoned steps and gleaming windows shielded by dolly-dyed net curtains. And by the side of each front door a slate in the wall for the lady of the house to chalk the number of bottles that were needed from the milkman.

  Of course the slate had originally been for the knocker-up to know which houses need a rap on the window for fore shift but now in the time of alarm clocks … Bloody hell! That poor girl, his poor darling. Damn and blast the man to hell and eternal damnation!

  Bob fought to control his emotions in the way he had used ever since he’d first been confronted with the misery and human agony he encountered in his work: by thinking of mundane things. And usually he was fairly successful, but not today, not when it was his Rose. Oh, dear God, no. He remembered with heartaching clarity her face when she was brought into the hospital the first time, how her poor bruised body was so lifeless, so cold, after lying out in that dene for so long in the icy early morning dew. How he and the nurses had worked over her, trying to bring life back to the poor young thing. And had succeeded at last. When she had opened her eyes the fear lurking in their depths had struck him like a blow. All he had wanted to do was gather her to him, keep her safe from the world, from whoever or whatever it was that had brought her to this state.

  And then the second time. Dear God …

  ‘Dr Morris?’

  He turned from his unseeing survey of the row of houses opposite to the young girl, Rose’s friend. ‘I’m sorry.’ He went back to his seat and sat down, even smiled at Marina.

  ‘I’ll come to see her. That will be all right, won’t it, Doctor?’

  ‘I’m sure it will. She needs a friend, it will do her good,’ he said. Heavens, he was repeating phrases he used about any and all of his patients.

  ‘No one else knows what I’ve told you, Doctor,’ Marina said, anxiety returning. ‘Not my family, not a soul, not even Jeff. Oh, they know her dad was rotten to her, mean and violent at times, but they don’t know about … about …’ She could not quite say it, not again, it had been difficult enough the first time. But, looking up at Bob, she saw him nodding in understanding.

  Jeff must be Marina’s husband, he surmised, that young fellow who had hurried off to the football. They hadn’t been introduced. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t mention it to anyone, I told you.’

  ‘She’s left the hospital, you say? Do you have her address?’ Bob took out his notebook, wrote the address on it and tore off the page. Then he got to his feet. He had to get out in the open air, would take the car up to the moors and get out and walk and walk until the fresh, clean air blew away some of the filth he felt he was steeped in.

  ‘Thank you, Marina,’ he said, holding out his hand to her, ‘for being so straight with me. You will go to see her, won’t you? On your own. I must stress that I don’t think she could face –’

  ‘On my own, Doctor.’

  He nodded, satisfied, and they were going towards the door when Kate knocked and put her head round. ‘You’ll have a cup of tea, Doctor?’ she asked, face alive with curiosity.

  Drat the woman! he thought, he couldn’t wait to go out. But Marina butted in smoothly, ‘The doctor is just off, Mam. He has to get back.’

  Bob hardly knew whether he mouthed the usual platitudes on leaving or not. His one thought was to get out on to the open road and vent his rage and love and great burden of pity for poor, damaged Rose out of sight of his fellow men.

  ‘Well? What did he want?’ Kate asked after the door had closed on Dr Morris and they had the house to themselves, at least until Brian came in. ‘Has something happened to Rose? Where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mam,’ said Marina, feeling the piece of paper in her skirt pocket and lying in her teeth. ‘He thought we might know, he’d met her ages ago.’

  Kate glared at her daughter. She knew full well that this wasn’t the truth. What fellow would come searching for a girl he’d met ages ago and hadn’t bothered to keep in touch with since? ‘By, our Marina! The day was when you used to tell me everything, we were that close,’ was all she said, however, her voice full of hurt.

  Marina decided it was time to change the subject. ‘Come on, Mam,’ she said. ‘Brian will be in soon and we’re all going to see the new house. Eeh, Mam, it’s grand, and there’s a lovely room for you. You’ll think it’s great, I know you will.’

  And Kate was instantly diverted. This was what she had be
en looking forward to ever since Brian and Marina were married.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Jeff drove to Shotton Colliery, his thoughts so full of Rose he could think of nothing else. She wasn’t in London, of course she wasn’t, that had been a red herring. He had known it at the time. She would have written to him if so. No, something had happened to her, she was in trouble, he was sure of it. Felt it in his very bones.

  But that woman in Shotton, her aunt, she must know where Rose was. She must. She was Alf’s sister, wasn’t she? Of the same blood, touched with the same rotten nature? Of course she was. Well, he was going to find out about Rose. He’d had all he was going to take of not knowing, this time he was determined to find her.

  Jeff drove along Front Street then pulled into a side street. He would walk from here, he thought, calm himself. He had been letting his thoughts run riot and that was no good. He had to do this right if he was to find out anything at all. Getting out of the car, he turned back into Front Street, looking about him, fixing in his mind the direction to the house he wanted.

  Passing the cafe, he glanced in the window, almost without thinking. And stopped and stared. He was hallucinating, he must be. The blood rushed to his head, his vision blurred. For God’s sake, it wasn’t her, it couldn’t be her. He wanted her so much that he was seeing her now when of course she wasn’t there at all. He put out one hand to support himself on the window frame, shook his head to clear it. Mind, if any of his friends saw him now they would laugh their caps off, they would. Him, Jeff, champion hewer and a strong man, a miner, weak and faint because he thought he saw a woman in a cafe.

  Rose sat at a table back from the window, holding the handle of her cup with one hand. With the fingers of the other she crumbled a cream cracker on her plate. She had come back to Shotton, drawn to the place, yearning to catch a glimpse of Michael and Mary, her feelings so strong she felt sure they must know and would come along Front Street. To the sweet shop surely? It was Saturday morning and they would have pocket money to spend. But she had sat here for an hour and hadn’t seen them so far. She was just fooling herself.

  Dr Morris had been going to drive her here in his car but at the last minute he’d said he had something important he had to do and that was just as well because she had to tell him that it was no good, she was no good to him, there was no future in a relationship between them. Nor ever had been, she thought guiltily. She knew she had been weak, letting him help her. In these last few weeks especially she had needed a friend so badly and he was there, whenever he could get time off from the hospital, bringing her flowers and chocolates, easing the terrible loneliness of her single room in the boarding house down by the docks in this old seaport, so battered by the war.

  She was strong enough now to come to Shotton on the bus, she’d told herself. But then she had had to stand all the way and when she had alighted had felt so weak and dizzy that she had come into the cafe and ordered Bovril and crackers for she’d had no breakfast. That was the reason, of course, just plain hunger. She had to be better because Dr Wray had said to her when she saw him in Outpatients yesterday that she could start work on Monday. Oh, Jeff, she thought sadly. Jeff. Sometimes she thought she would never, ever see him again and she couldn’t bear it. And his name, the memory of his face laughing into hers, the clean smell of carbolic soap and something else, the essential Jeff, kept returning to her at times when she was thinking of something else altogether, and the sense of loss which followed then left her desolate.

  She had to think of something else, she thought desperately. Had to eat for a start. But she was having trouble getting the cracker down. The hot Bovril was nice, comforting, reminding her of the times during the war when the rations had almost run out, the night before the Co-op store waggon came round with Mam’s order, and they’d had Bovril and bread for supper. She put a sliver of cracker in her mouth and washed it down with the beefy drink and then she looked up at the window again and Jeff was there, leaning against the side of the window, staring at her.

  He straightened up, his vision clearing. It was Rose, it was! His lovely Rose here in Shotton Colliery on a Saturday morning, not in London, nowhere but here, and he knew that it was this that had drawn him here, the presence of his love. He drank in the sight of her. She was gazing at him now, her lovely dark eyes enormous in her white face, her soft mouth slightly open as she started to rise from her chair to come to him.

  Suddenly he moved, pushing the door open, and in two strides was by her side, taking her in his arms and holding her, kissing her, drowning in the total and absolute joy of it. And she was holding him, clinging to him, murmuring his name against the crisp hair at the nape of his neck.

  Around them there was an astonished silence lasting for all of ten seconds, then someone chuckled and the cafe owner said, ‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing? Not in here, if you please.’ But he was shouted down by his customers and subsided behind the counter as they began to clap and cheer.

  ‘Come on, my love,’ said Jeff and took her hand and walked her out of the cafe and round the corner to where he had parked the car. They got in. It was their own private little world. He took her in his arms again and murmured to her, disjointedly.

  ‘Where have you been? Not a letter … you should have written … I’ve been out of my mind … Oh, my love, my precious love. Thank God, thank God, thank God …’

  Rose couldn’t speak, lost in the incredible sweetness of being here, in his arms. In any case there was no need, not yet, for he wasn’t waiting for an answer. His lips were on hers, his body pressed against hers and a clamouring was rising within her, a great surge of feeling that refused to be denied.

  Someone was knocking at the window, giggling and chattering, sounds which at last penetrated through the haze of Jeff’s love. He looked up. There were boys outside the car, young lads of ten or eleven, all grinning and pointing at them, eyes old and knowing, nodding to him to go on; it was a show to them.

  ‘Come away from that car!’ a male voice shouted and over on the other side of the road there was a policeman wheeling his bicycle, propping it up against a wall, preparing to come over.

  ‘We have to go, flower,’ said Jeff, disengaging himself tenderly. Putting the car into gear, he set off, leaving the boys and the policeman staring after them. He drove up Front Street and turned left, not making for anywhere in particular, just getting away to somewhere, anywhere where they would not have an audience to their love. Rose sat beside him, glancing up at him every few seconds, reassuring herself it was really Jeff and often he caught her glance and they smiled into each other’s eyes for a fraction of a second because he had to keep his attention on the road, had to force himself to for he was carrying a precious load now, he was driving his Rose.

  She turned to look out of the window, hardly knowing what she was seeing but then with a jolt realising they were driving along the end of the colliery rows and suddenly the brightness they were enveloped in fell away and dark horror filled her.

  ‘Stop!’ she cried, one hand scrabbling at his arm. ‘Oh, stop!’ And he braked hard and pulled into the kerb while behind him someone pipped angrily and held up two fingers to him which he never even saw.

  ‘What? What’s the matter? Tell me –’ But he broke off as he realised that she wasn’t even listening to him, she was fumbling with the door catch, sobbing in frustration because she couldn’t get it open. He leaned across and opened it for her and she tumbled out and ran down the road, with Jeff close at her heels though at first he didn’t know why they were running.

  Then he saw them. For a second only, Rose’s Aunt Elsie sobbing and crying, her mouth slack and ugly, her nose running, her hair wild in the wind. And Alf Sharpe pushing Michael and Mary into a car – Michael shouting and screaming at his father, Mary white-faced and quiet. And then they were gone, Rose only a couple of yards behind them, running after the car as it picked up speed and took off for the main road.

  ‘You let them go! You
let them go with him and you knew what would happen … what he would do …’

  Rose was screaming at her aunt. She brought her arm back and slapped the older woman hard on the face, making her reel against an end wall. Elsie stayed there, no longer sobbing, just staring at Rose in ashen-faced horror. Jeff caught up with Rose and pulled her to him, holding her close, pinioning her arms so that she could not use them on Elsie again, for the rage and hate on her face showed that she would kill her if she could.

  Dear God, he thought, what was it all about? What? Surely Elsie had not done anything to warrant this? He dragged Rose back towards the car and she was still screaming at the woman. ‘Why? Why did you let them go? Why?’ But her voice was lower now, failing, her face breaking up in the throes of extreme distress. He pulled her to him, turning her face into his jacket to screen her from the curiosity of the folk now standing around, attracted by the fuss, the unexpected sight of one woman attacking another in the open street on a cold Saturday morning.

  ‘Go after them, Jeff, please! Please, go after them. Stop him, Jeff,’ Rose cried after he finally got her into the car. She was fighting for self-control, taking great gulps of air into her lungs.

  ‘I will, of course I will, but where will he be taking them? Jordan?’

  ‘Jordan, yes, he’ll be taking them there.’

  ‘But why is it so urgent? What –’

  ‘Don’t ask questions Jeff, please, just go,’ she said, clutching at his arm.

  ‘All right, I’m going, don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll catch them up. That was a hired car, the driver won’t put up any speed.’ He really didn’t know what the urgency was but he trusted Rose implicitly. He started the car and was away immediately, touching the speed limit, but when he got out of the village and on to the main road he opened up and the little car ate up the miles.

  In the back of the car he had hired at Heatley Hill, only a couple of miles from Shotton Colliery, Alf sat with the twins on either side of him. He was filled with a sense of triumph. By, he’d got one over that bitch of a sister of his, hadn’t he? And he didn’t believe for a minute she would go to the polis, of course she wouldn’t. She was as guilty as he was, wasn’t she? He looked down at Michael, sitting at the extreme end of the seat, as close to the door as he could possibly get, determined not to touch him, his own father.