A Girl Called Rosie (10 page)

Rosie smiled and said nothing, a great wave of relief sweeping over her.

‘I wonder,’ said her grandmother slowly, ‘could it be that cap you left behind in Dublin, John.’

‘Aye, cap, not cat,’ said John, his face lighting up.

‘I left my other driving cap behind in Dublin, Bridget,’ he explained. ‘Maybe the hotel thought it best to send it to our home address.’

‘Ach yes, they would. It’s what we do here as well. You wouden believe what people leave behind that has to be packed up and sent. England and America inta the bargain.’

‘Well, we’ll try not to do that, Bridget,’ said Rose, getting slowly to her feet. ‘Will you come out to see us off?’

‘Indeed I will, ma’am. As soon as I see ye’s gettin’ inta the motor, or yer man finishin’ up his tea, I’ll take a wee run out. I’ve sent the porter up for yer cases.’

Rosie went back up to her room knowing she had nothing left to do but look out at the garden, at the pattern of shrubs and flowers that had been her companion for nearly two weeks now and at the sea beyond. She stood by the window not knowing whether she wanted to treasure these last precious moments in this world, or wishing she was back and settled in the very different world that awaited her.

Now that the cases had gone, the small one her father had brought from Richhill and the larger one her grandfather had bought her for her birthday, all that was left of her presence in this bright, pretty room was a woven bag from a gift shop in Killarney. In it she had put a book for the journey, the maps her grandfather said he no longer needed, her
half-filled
sketch book with its treasure of small pressed flowers secured by rubber bands and the slim volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

She took it out and leafed through it yet again, her mind moving back and forth over her meetings with Patrick. He had seldom been out of her thoughts since they’d sent him off on the train from Tralee. Now they knew he was safe. From somewhere in Dublin he’d phoned his coded message to let them know he’d arrived.

It was almost time to go down to the courtyard. The motor would be waiting, the young man from the hire company ready to drive them to the station
at Kenmare before returning with the Bentley to Tralee. She was about to close the book and put it back in her bag when she caught a slight noise outside her door. There was the briefest of knocks as her grandmother came into the room.

‘Goodbyes are so sad,’ she said, taking one look at Rosie’s face.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, making an effort to smile. ‘Is it time to go?’

‘Yes, it is. He’s finished his tea, and Bridget is waiting.’ To Rosie’s own surprise, she held out the book to her grandmother.

‘Granny, could you tell me what this means?’

‘Well, yes. I’m a bit rusty,’ said Rose, slightly taken aback.

‘But this is quite easy. It says: To Rosie, who will always be my angel and my rose. Patrick.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, as she took the book and put it away. ‘I meant to ask you sooner …’ she added awkwardly.

‘He’s a very charming young man. I’m sure you’ll meet again some day.’

She slipped an arm round her waist and drew her out of the room and along the landing to where the broad, carpeted stairs led them down to the courtyard from which they would begin their long journey home.

There were wisps of cloud on the far horizon as they drove briskly along the southern stretch of the Ring of Kerry to the station at Kenmare, but by the time they reached the little town heavy grey swags had covered the sun. As they unloaded the luggage, tiny stabs of warm rain fell. Sitting by the window, as the train steamed steadily eastwards, smoke billowing around the carriages in the strengthening breeze, Rosie watched the heavier rain catch up with them, driven by the strengthening westerly wind from the Atlantic, and spatter noisily against the window beside her.

The rain continued to chase them eastwards throughout the day. She watched the green countryside slip past beyond the streaming carriage windows, its rich colours even more intense under the laden grey skies than in the brilliant sunshine of their journey down.

They arrived in Dublin in a downpour, heard thunder in the night and set off again the next
morning as the first gleams of light broke through the massed clouds. As they stood outside the hotel waiting for the luggage to be loaded, she watched the wet pavements begin to dry, the pale centre of each flagstone expanding outwards in the fresh breeze, moment by moment.

Halfway to Drogheda, the clouds parted and the sun finally broke through. Rosie, focused on the ruffled white caps fretting the navy-blue of the sea, stared in amazement as the broad expanse of dark water was transformed to a deep turquoise. She would never have believed that any stretch of Irish coast could look like the cover illustration on
Coral Island
, a tropical sea bathed in sunshine and rimmed with golden sand. Only the palm trees were missing.

She wondered if she would ever see this gleaming expanse of sea again, or stand by the shore on the west coast gazing out over the Atlantic with nothing but ocean between her and America. Her grandmother had waited a lifetime to revisit her beloved mountains of Kerry. She wondered where her own life would take her and whether she’d have the chance to return to somewhere she’d been so happy.

As so often since they’d left him at the station in Tralee, she found herself thinking of Patrick. Somewhere in the city rapidly being left further and further behind them, he was going about his
everyday life. Doing whatever job he’d been able to find to earn enough money to stay at college. Meeting friends, reading History, his chosen subject, or poetry, clearly his passion, or any of the hundreds of books he would have access to, as a student in a very literate city.

She wondered if she wasn’t more than a little envious of him. It was surely hard enough for him to exist on very little money and keep up his studies, but at least he had the choice. Being a woman, it would be impossible for her. She simply didn’t have that choice. In fact, she saw so clearly now, once she got home she hadn’t very much choice about anything.

She glanced across at her grandmother and saw she’d closed her eyes. Over the last weeks, she’d worked out that she was seldom asleep even when her eyes were closed. Rose herself had admitted she was usually thinking. So many memories had been awakened by this very special journey, she could hardly take them all in.

Suddenly, she remembered a story her grandmother had told her when they were sitting together in the garden of the hotel in Waterville. She’d been struggling to catch the tones of the mountains with some new watercolours they’d bought that morning and Rose was encouraging her. Then, quite suddenly she began to talk about the mountains of Donegal where she’d been born.

Often before she’d talked about her childhood home, but this time she spoke quite slowly and in detail about the terrible morning when her parents and her brothers and sister were evicted from their home.

What so surprised Rosie was the cool, steady tone of her voice, so at odds with the heartache of the story she was telling. She could hear it even now.

‘I remember my mother going round the house, looking at everything, touching things, gathering them up. I didn’t understand at the time, but later I realised what she was doing. She was gathering all the thoughts and memories together so that she would have the home she’d made for us all safe inside her head when the house itself was only a heap of rubble.’

A cloud moved across the face of the sun, the tropical sea resumed its dark, ruffled aspect. Rosie stared at it as she went over her grandmother’s words in her mind, yet once more. Perhaps that’s what she herself had been doing all these miles from Kenmare. Gathering up the memories of this wonderful journey, so that when life was reduced to the farmyard, the lane up the hill to Uncle Henry’s shop, she could be sure there
was
another world out there, a world she might one day be able to reach out for.

‘Porty-down, Porty-down. All change for Richhill, Armagh, Monaghan, Cavan …’

Rosie almost laughed aloud as the train slowed to a halt. If there was one thing that made Miss Wilson really cross, it was when one of her pupils failed to pronounce the name of their nearest town in the proper manner.

‘Port-a-down,’ she would repeat. ‘Port-a-down.’ Then she’d add a little homily on the importance of correct pronunciation. It was a matter of courtesy, she insisted, to get the names of people and places exactly right.

‘Home James,’ said John Hamilton, folding his newspapers into a neat bundle and peering out at the stationmaster as he tramped past the carriage window, reeling off his long list of stations. ‘I hope our reception committee has got here all right,’ he said, more than a hint of anxiety coming into his voice as he glanced up at the well-filled luggage racks and thought of all the heavy items in the guard’s van.

‘Yes, we did expand a bit, didn’t we?’ said Rose to reassure him, ‘But you’ve a lovely tweed jacket to show for it.’

‘And I have
two
dresses
and
a suitcase,’ Rosie added quickly.

‘Ach, sure there’s Alex,’ he broke in, the relief in his voice only too obvious. ‘An’ someone else with him,’ he added. ‘I can’t make out at all who it is with that pillar in the way.’

‘Oh, how nice,’ said Rose, as she looked out herself and began to laugh at his puzzlement. ‘It’s your godson. Saturday must be his day off.’

‘I hope all’s well over at Dromore,’ John replied, his eyes screwed up against the light as he tried to catch sight of the young man for himself.

‘Aunty Rose, Uncle John, welcome home,’ said the tall figure, bending down to kiss Rose as soon as he’d helped her safely to the ground. ‘Alex here thought you were a bit squashed on the way over, so he’s let me come to help take you home,’ he added, as John stepped down to the platform and clapped him on the shoulder.

There were kisses and handshakes all around.

‘My goodness, you’re looking well,’ Alex declared, turning and lifting Rosie down lightly from the carriage.

‘Indeed, Alex is right. You
are
looking very well. Much better than the last time I saw you.’

It was only when she heard his voice that Rosie registered the tall young man in an open-necked shirt, so warmly greeted by her grandparents, was the same young man as the dark-suited doctor who sat by her bed a mere three weeks ago encouraging her gently and with great kindness to tell him about her family and her plans for the future.

She looked up at him, saw the sparkle in his grey eyes as he held out his hand and bowed over hers in
a slight theatrical gesture. To her own amazement and distress, she blushed.

‘My goodness, it was as well I brought Richard,’ said Alex cheerfully, as he surveyed the luggage a porter had brought from the guard’s van to join what a second one had fetched out from the empty carriage. ‘Sure, I thought you were going for the scenery.’

‘And to get driving a Bentley,’ added Richard, as they followed after the porters and their trolleys.

Alex sized up the luggage now piled high on the pavement of the station forecourt. Deftly, he and Richard began to load the two waiting motors.

‘It looks as if there were shops as well as scenery,’ he commented, beaming down at Rose.

‘You never know what might be in those cases, Alex,’ she came back at him. ‘We don’t forget our good friends or their family just because we go on holiday.’

He handed her into John’s well-polished Austen saloon.

‘I’m sorry we can’t run to a Bentley, but as they say in these parts, now you’re home you’ll have to sit on an egg less.’

John laughed heartily as he levered himself into the driving seat. Alex swung the starting handle and, as she fired first time, he jumped in beside him, waving at Richard and Rosie as they set off.

A few minutes later, Richard’s Morris followed
after with Rosie in the front seat beside him. How she came to be there she wasn’t entirely sure. Alex had loaded two heavy cases into the back seats, but who it was suggested it would balance the weight if she drove with Richard she really couldn’t remember, there had been so much talk and laughter over her grandmother’s determined defence that she’d only bought presents on this holiday to make up for all the ones they’d never had.

‘So, did you have as good a holiday as it seems, Rosie?’ Richard asked, glancing towards her with a smile as they came clear of the station traffic.

‘Yes, I did. It was all quite wonderful. I can’t imagine I shall ever have such a lovely holiday again.’

‘Oh surely not,’ he said gently. ‘Think of all the marvellous places you can go when you’re older. Not just Ireland. Scotland, England, the Continent, even America. Would you like to travel?’

She glanced sideways. His eyes were fixed on a horse-drawn dray loaded with some heavy piece of machinery, proceeding towards them at a snail’s pace and taking up most of the road. His face was rather long and not handsome at all when she came to think of it. Certainly not by the standards of the film magazines Lizzie Mackay was so devoted to. On the other hand, he had large grey eyes that looked directly at you. Kind eyes that seemed to see the best in you. They smiled easily too as if he was
always ready to find something to be pleased about.

‘What do you think that is?’ he said, frowning, as the dray edged slowly past their stationery vehicle.

‘It might be a transverse engine,’ she replied thoughtfully, ‘judging by the size. What I can’t understand is why they’re using horses and not a road engine for such a heavy load.’

‘Actually I meant that slight hiccough coming from our engine. Though I do agree it seems strange to see a team of horses these days working on something so heavy.’

The dray moved past, its projecting load so wide there were only inches to spare. He put the Morris into gear and drove off cautiously. The hiccough grew less frequent, but was still there.

‘It’s pinking,’ she told him, as soon as the road was clear.

‘Is that dangerous?’

‘No, just a bad sign. A symptom of an unhappy engine,’ she added laughing. ‘It could be one of about three things: plugs, distributor or magneto.’

He looked at her in surprise.

‘With any luck, we’ll make Rathdrum and you’ll get the best repair service for miles around. Granda and Uncle Alex will just love taking your engine to pieces.’

‘You think they can fix it?’

‘Oh yes. It’s finding the problem that’s difficult.
It’s relatively simple once you’ve worked it out. I suppose it’s the same with diagnosis. You can’t really prescribe for a patient until you know what’s wrong, can you?’

She didn’t know what to make of the brief look he gave her as they turned on to the familiar road to Banbridge. He said nothing more and seemed to be concentrating on his driving, so she turned away and cast her eye round the still saturated countryside, lit up by a sun now high in a clear blue sky.

The low-lying meadows between the small, humpy hills were still flooded in places. The cattle who’d come to drink were reflected in the pools of water along with the taller clumps of grass and the branched stems of buttercup. Wherever a track ran to a barn or a field entrance, the light struck back from the flooded wheel ruts and made parallel silver lines through the rich green of meadow or the sodden yellow of stubble.

‘Have you thought any more about what you’re going to do next?’ he asked as the silence extended.

‘Yes,’ she said wryly. ‘I’ve thought lots, but I’ve not made much progress. Granny has been very good. We’ve talked about all sorts of possibilities, but she knows she can’t do anything to help me unless my father agrees.’

‘And wouldn’t he want to do anything that would help you?’

‘Oh yes, he would if he could. But my father is very fair. Granny and I know he thinks it would be wrong to give me something he couldn’t give to all my brothers and sisters. There are nine of us, you see. My older brothers and sister have all gone out to work straight from school while I’ve had an extra year at Miss Wilson’s. I still don’t know how Granny managed that, but I doubt if she could persuade him to let me do training of any kind. My mother wants me to go into service in some of the big houses. My Uncle Henry had it all lined up for me at Richhill Castle …’

‘You mean as a servant?’

Rosie looked at him quickly, taken aback by the shocked tone of his voice.

‘It’s that or being a shop assistant in Portadown or Armagh,’ she said matter-of-factly.

She studied his profile as he negotiated a cluster of vehicles in the narrow main street of Gilford. When he was concentrating, his face did seem long and rather thin, but when he talked or laughed it looked quite different. It reminded her of Uncle Alex, who actually looked cross, his face set in sombre lines, until he laughed.

‘What would you do if your fairy godmother waved her wand and said you could do whatever you liked?’ he said suddenly as the road opened ahead of them without another vehicle in sight.

He threw out one hand to wave an imaginary wand over her.

She laughed, closed her eyes tight and then looked up at the bright sky.

‘I’d like to be a lady,’ she said, grinning. ‘Lady Rose, if you please. I’d have lots and lots of money and people who were clever and could do things to help me and I’d do important things like Aunt Sarah. I’d see what people needed and I’d be able to do something about it. I could set up nurseries for poor children, and workshops, and dispensaries, just like she did. There’s nothing like that where I live. There are poor people who haven’t enough to eat, and old people who can’t even keep clean unless they’ve got family to help them, and not everyone has family. And anyway not all families get on with each other …’