A Season of Secrets (27 page)

‘Be fair, Rosie!’ He was genuinely aggrieved. ‘I’ve never said I was going to put a ring on your finger. I’m never going to put a ring on anyone’s finger. And
I didn’t see the sense in telling you the job was in the offing, because why would I want a scene like this, if it proved to be all for nowt?’

‘All for nowt? That’s what this bloody relationship’s been!’ Her eyes blazed with frustrated fury. ‘I thought you and me were goin’ somewhere, Hal Crosby. I
thought you were a cut above what passes for men in this neck o’ the woods. But you’re no bleedin’ different. You’re a manky, minging, clarty . . .’ Running out of
adjectives, she wildly looked around for something to throw at him. All that was at hand were bottles and glasses.

Reading her mind, and having no intention of being a sitting target, Hal relinquished his pint of Tetley’s and slid smartly off the bar stool.

There were guffaws of laughter from a group of farm labourers hunched around a nearby table.

‘That’s right, Rosie lass!’ one of the labourers called out. ‘You tell ’im what’s what. You give him ’ell and come out wi’ me tonight!’

‘You sling your hook,’ she shot back at him. ‘I wouldn’t go out wi’ you if you were the last man on Earth!’

She returned her attention to Hal, but this time her eyes were bright with tears, not rage. She said deflatedly, ‘Are you really going to London, Hal?’

He nodded. ‘It was always the plan, Rosie.’

‘It wasn’t my plan.’

There was such bleak disappointment in her voice that when another of the labourers sniggered, his mate sitting next to him gave him a silencing shove in the ribs.

Aware that all the occupants of the Public Bar were now avidly waiting for what he was about to say next, Hal decided his best plan was to ignore his audience and plough on as if it wasn’t
there.

‘We’d have run out of steam in another few months, Rosie,’ he said gently. ‘It’s best this way. Look after yourself, love. Be happy.’

It was as good an exit line as any and, leaving her standing at the pumps, a picture of dejection, he walked out of the bar, letting the ancient oak door of the Black Horse slam shut behind him
for the last time.

Once out in the narrow cobbled street, he pulled the collar of his jacket up as protection against the stiff, chill breeze. Hal wasn’t easily fazed, and he hadn’t been so in the pub.
He hadn’t enjoyed his ten minutes in there, though, and he wasn’t looking forward to the next goodbye he was about to make. Carrie’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt in the same
manner as Rosie’s had been, but his moving down to London would affect her far more deeply than it was going to affect Rosie. Rosie’s love life would be up and running again as fast as
light, but the gap his going would make in Carrie’s life wouldn’t be filled so easily – if at all.

Of their childhood circle of five, he was the only one living within easy reach of Monkswood. Every time she had a day off Carrie would cycle from Monkswood into Richmond and meet Hal in the
cafe in the market place for tea and cakes. Sometimes, if one of his days off coincided with hers, he would drive her to Outhwaite so that she could visit her granny, and they would meet up with
Charlie and Hermione, and Jim. His move to London wouldn’t mean an end to her trips to Outhwaite. She would, he knew, still go, catching the bus in Richmond’s market place and getting
off it an hour later opposite the Pig and Whistle in Outhwaite’s High Street. She would, though, feel isolated and lonely – how could she not, when he would be 200 miles away in London,
as, for most of the year, were Thea, Olivia and Violet, and when Roz was thousands of miles further away, in America?

She was seated at their usual corner table, dressed in a serviceable navy coat and navy Mary-Jane shoes, her dark-red, modestly plain hat a perfect foil to the heavy wheat-coloured knot of hair
coiled low at the nape of her neck. In serviceable clothes that didn’t even give a nod towards fashion and without a hint of powder and lipstick, she should have looked plain and dowdy. She
didn’t. She looked as pretty as a picture and as wholesome as a sunny May morning.

‘I haven’t ordered tea yet,’ she said as Hal joined her at the table. ‘I didn’t want it to have cooled before you got here. Why was it so important we met up today,
and with so little notice? I had to promise I’d do without a day off for two weeks to make up for taking today off.’

‘Sorry, Carrie. It couldn’t be helped.’ A waitress approached and he said, ‘A pot of tea for two, and two toasted teacakes and a stand of fancies, please.’

At least I haven’t had docked the time I’ve arranged to have off at Easter, but that’s because Lady Markham will be on the Riviera and so my taking two days of my annual
week’s holiday doesn’t matter too much.’

‘Which is important because . . . ?’

‘Because Thea, Olivia and Violet are all at Gorton over Easter and because they want me to spend as much time with them as possible.’ Her eyes glowed in happy anticipation.
‘There’s to be a weekend house-party and a ball. Thea said in her last letter that there hasn’t been a ball at Gorton since 1912 when she was six years old.’

‘And all this so that the new Lady Fenton can be introduced to the other idle rich of the county?’

Carrie was too used to Hal’s derogatory remarks about the upper classes to begin a squabble with him.

‘All this so that she can meet people in Yorkshire who are her social equals,’ she said tranquilly. ‘It’s no different from you having a cousin from Cornwall move to
Outhwaite. What is the first thing you would do? You’d take him to the Pig and Whistle so that he could meet everyone and make friends.’

He grinned, knowing that when it came to the class divide he and Carrie were never going to sing from the same hymn sheet.

The waitress arrived with the tea, toasted teacakes and cake-stand. As they were put on the gingham-clothed table, Carrie said, ‘Roz is coming over for the ball. She hasn’t met Lady
Zephiniah yet, either.’

‘As you won’t be a guest at the ball, are you sure you’ll be meeting her?’

Carrie stared at him, startled. ‘But of course I shall meet her! How could I not, when I’ll be at Gorton with Thea and Olivia before the ball begins?’ Recovering her
equilibrium, she began pouring the tea. ‘I’ve never seen the ballroom without dust-sheets. It’s going to be so marvellous to see all the mirrors and chandeliers gleaming, and all
the flowers. Even though it’s so early in the year there are going to be lots of flowers. Hermione says Charlie and his gardeners have been nurturing lilies and peonies for weeks in the
hothouses.’

Hal knew all about the hive of activity that had been taking place at Gorton in preparation for the family’s arrival at Easter because on his journey back from London, after his interview
for the job on the
Evening News
, he’d stopped off at Outhwaite to tell his uncle about his exciting new job prospect.

Jim had been sanguine about it. ‘London, is it?’ he’d said. ‘I wouldn’t fancy it myself. I reckon it’d be too much like Bradford – noisy and dirty, only
an ’ell of a lot bigger. Still, if that’s what you want, lad.’

‘It is what I want,’ he’d said. ‘Anyway, I’ve always liked Bradford. If it had ever come to a toss-up between my working on the
Richmond Times
or the
Bradford
Telegraph & Argus,
I’d have chosen the
Telegraph & Argus
every time.’

It occurred to Hal now, as he watched Carrie pour milk into the teacups, that he was going to miss Bradford far more than he was going to miss Richmond. Bradford had one of the finest
Mechanics’ Institutes in the country and he regularly attended the lectures given by visiting speakers there. It was also the city where, in January 1893, the Independent Labour Party had
been born and its programme laid out.

The aims of that programme were carved in Hal’s heart. Medical treatment and school feeding programmes for impoverished children. The establishment of public measures to reduce
unemployment and provide aid to the unemployed. Welfare programmes for orphans, widows, the elderly, the disabled and the sick. The abolition of child labour. The abolition of piecework and the
establishment of an eight-hour working day. Free education up to university level. Housing reform.

When he thought of how much on that magnificent programme was still to be achieved, impatience roared through his veins. A better day was coming, but it was far from being here yet.

‘. . . and so why was it important for us to meet up today?’ Carrie asked, breaking into his thoughts.

‘Because I’ve been given a job on a London paper and I’m leaving for London directly we leave the cafe.’

It was a brutal way of breaking the news, but, as with Rosie, he couldn’t see how breaking it gently would make the end result any easier.

She stared across the table at him for a long moment, assimilating the news and what would it mean for him, and what it would mean for her. Then she said, not wanting her sense of loss to spoil
things for him, ‘I’m so pleased for you, Hal. It’s what you’ve always wanted, and you so deserve it. You must be over the moon – and so must Miss Calvert. You have
told her about it, haven’t you?’

‘I told her even before I told Jim.’

Aware that she was dangerously close to revealing how desperately she was going to miss him, she forced a giggle into her voice as she said, ‘And just how did a twenty-year-old Yorkshire
tyke get himself a job on a London newspaper?’

‘Connections,’ he said teasingly.

‘You don’t have any connections,’ Carrie replied, amused despite her pain at the thought of their regular meetings in the cafe coming to such an abrupt end.

‘That’s where you’re wrong – and when I dropped a hint of them to the sub-editor who interviewed me, he had a word with the paper’s editor, Frank Fitzhugh, and he
then interviewed me. First thing he asked was where my interests lay and I said politics.’ Hal grinned. ‘He told me I was a cheeky bugger and that his political editor would have ten
fits if he was assigned a junior reporter straight down from the outer darkness of North Yorkshire.’

‘And what did you say? Did you tell him you were a Labour Party member and went to meetings and rallies?’

‘No, because that wouldn’t have impressed him and would probably have counted against me.’

Seeing her bewilderment, he said, ‘It helps if a political reporter is objective – unless, of course, he’s working on a paper devoted entirely to one particular party, such as
the Independent Labour Party’s
Clarion
.’ He spooned sugar into his tea. ‘What I told him was that I was on personal terms with a government minister – Lord Fenton.
Which is the truth,’ he added, as Carrie’s eyes widened in alarm at his taking such a liberty. ‘If Fenton was ever asked, he wouldn’t let me down. He’s not a snob,
I’ll give him that. I then told Fitzhugh I was on personal terms with the Third Secretary at the German Embassy. Which was stretching the truth a bit, because I haven’t met
Olivia’s fiancé yet, but I will be doing. Olivia will see to that. By this time I could see the cogs in Fitzhugh’s brain whirring away at the thought of having a staff reporter
who had inside contacts both in Parliament and at the German Embassy. Then, to put the icing on the cake, I told him I had a family connection, Kyle Anderson, who had recently been appointed
attaché at the American Embassy and that I had an “in” with Maxwell Bradley, a Republican member of the US House of Representatives, presently serving on the Dawes Committee.
From then on it was plain sailing. How could he
not
have hired me?’

Carrie’s eyes were still wide with alarm. ‘But not only have you not even met Dieter von Starhemberg – though I do agree that you will, because Olivia has said repeatedly in
her letters that she can’t wait for both of us to meet him – but you haven’t met Kyle Anderson or Max Bradley, either.’ Anxiety for him filled her voice. ‘And what if
you never get to meet them? Or if, even if you do, they are so close-mouthed you learn nothing whatsoever from them?’

‘Don’t be so negative, Carrie. I will get to meet them – and they’ll all be massively useful to me. As today is our last regular day here, have we to finish off with a
fresh pot of tea and some vanilla slices?’

She nodded and smiled, and hoped he wouldn’t see how very much she was going to miss him.

He did see, though. Not for the first time he wondered if Carrie had secret hopes that one day he would propose to her. It was, he knew, what the villagers of Outhwaite expected him to do.
Sometimes he almost expected it was something he would do, but although she was an integral part of his life and he loved her dearly and knew he’d be capable of killing anyone who harmed
Carrie, he didn’t love her in the sexual, all-consuming, gut-wrenching, soul-destroying way he loved Thea.

Thea.

Trying not to think about her was an impossibility. He thought about her all the time. Even Rosie, at her glorious, sexiest best, hadn’t obliterated Thea from his thoughts; and moving to
London – where he would be nearer to her – certainly wasn’t going to do so. Somehow, though, he was going to have to maintain the stand he had taken up the night of her coming-out
ball – which was that the class divide between them was too deep to be overcome. It was something common sense had told him, even before passion had sprung up between them like a forest fire,
but until the night of her coming-out ball it had been something he’d preferred not to face.

He pushed his cup and saucer away. If he wanted to reach London in time to sleep at the Fleet Street pub that was to be his address until he found a more permanent one, he had to set off
now.

‘I have to be off, Carrie.’ He dug a piece of paper out of his pocket with the name and address of the pub on it. ‘I’ll write, and you can write to me here.’

She took the piece of paper and put it in her handbag.

‘Any problem you have, love – anything, at any time – let me know and I’ll be back in Yorkshire as fast as light to deal with it. Understand?’

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, knowing that if she did her voice would be unsteady.