Her thoughts hardened Flora’s resolve, and now her voice was very controlled and even as she said, ‘What you do is up to you, of course, but it doesn’t alter what’s been said. We’ll still be friends?’
She looked up at him as she spoke and his eyes were waiting for her, and they were warm and soft when he replied, ‘Of course we’ll still be friends, Flora.’
‘And . . . and you forgive me, about not telling you the truth about Shane and Rosie?’
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference, Flora. She was already married,’ he said quietly. It wasn’t the point and they both knew it, but then he took her hand and tucked it through his arm as he continued, ‘But if it makes you feel better, of course I forgive you, you know that.’ He tried to keep his voice even and steady, but the tumult of emotions filling his chest made it difficult. He should be feeling wretched - he thought a lot of Flora, he always had done, hadn’t he - but it was as though a ton weight had lifted from his shoulders in the last few minutes, and the removal of it was making him light-headed.
It was over, done with. Flora forced herself to keep walking and talking although her mind was working quite separately to what her mouth was saying. Although it wasn’t quite over, was it? There was something else to do before she could put all this behind her and start to pick up the pieces of her life, if that was possible. And this last thing would be more difficult than anything which had gone before.
The second sweep of furious blizzards and deep snow meant that Flora didn’t get to visit Rosie until the end of the first week of January. The papers and radio were full of the fact that the Thames had burst its banks in London, flooding low-lying districts and killing fourteen people owing to the combination of a high tide and sudden thaw, but the north remained icebound.
Rosie was busy baking in the kitchen when Flora arrived. Since Annie’s passing she had taken to stocking up Arthur and the lads with fresh bread, cakes, ham pies and other such necessities once a week, pretending each time she delivered the food parcels that it was simply to indulge her love of cooking and that their empty cupboards and bare shelves were unnoticed by her. She looked on Arthur and the lads as extensions of Annie and quite unconnected with Shane, and even when the numbness surrounding thoughts of Annie’s youngest had worn off and she had felt a bitterness so deep it had been a dark abyss, it hadn’t influenced the way she had thought about Annie’s husband and other sons. In the last year Patrick and Michael had started courting local lasses, but Arthur had told her both were chary of committing themselves with the depression biting hard, and again Rosie’s thoughts had returned to the little farm. But it would have to wait until the better weather, and even then she might not find anything suitable at the right price. It was an enormous undertaking at best.
Flora followed Rosie through into the warm fragrant confines of the kitchen, lifting her nose as she sniffed with loud appreciation. ‘By, Rosie, you’re making my mouth water.’ And surprisingly enough Flora found it was true. Since New Year’s Eve she had had no appetite whatsoever, but warm spice wigs fresh from the oven were hard to resist, broken heart or no broken heart.
‘Help yourself.’ Rosie indicated the yeasted teacakes with a wave of her hand. ‘There’s a slab of butter in the pantry although it’ll be rock hard.’
‘Peter’s mam eats nine or ten of these in one go,’ Flora confided as she bit into the teacake which was bulging with currants. ‘And with each mouthful she always says, “I’ll have one more bite and that’s all, I’ve got to watch my weight.” Peter says on the quiet that he reckons that’s all she does do - watch it. Watch it go up and up and up.’
Flora was sitting in front of the kitchen range and her voice was mild and conversational, but Rosie’s eyes were penetrating as they focused on her friend’s face. Flora hadn’t mentioned Peter in months. It was all Davey. Always Davey.
‘How is Peter?’ Rosie kept her voice casual as she turned her hands to the pastry, and she didn’t look at Flora now.
‘Peter’s fine.’ Flora didn’t have to force the thread of affection in her voice. She had told herself several times over the last days that she didn’t know what she would have done without Peter Baxter. She and Davey had decided on New Year’s Eve that there would be no formal announcement of the end of their engagement; she’d never worn an engagement ring anyway, she had just changed her mother’s ring to the third finger of her left hand after Davey had spoken. But then she had broken down at work on the Tuesday following the weekend and it had all come out. Peter had been marvellous. There had been no I-told-you-so, or any indication that he considered she’d got her just deserts, he had just been the same old Peter - supporting her one hundred per cent. He had mopped up her tears, fetched her a cup of tea and then waited for her after work and driven her back to her lodgings. And now Flora took a deep breath after finishing the teacake in one gulp before saying, ‘I’m sort of seeing him again actually. Davey and I . . . It wasn’t working out.’
‘
What?
’ Rosie couldn’t say any more, she just looked at Flora.
‘Don’t look at me like that.’
‘Don’t look at you . . . Flora, I
know
how you feel about Davey. What on earth happened? Did you have a row?’
‘No.’ And then to Rosie’s surprise Flora suddenly stood up and took Rosie’s floury hands in her own, blinking rapidly as she said, ‘He loves you, Rosie. He’s always loved you. I won’t pretend to be a saint and say I think it’s fair, and if I thought there was any chance at all for me I wouldn’t be here now. There, that’s the truth. But it was me who finished it. I suddenly realized I couldn’t face the rest of my life with a man who wanted to be with someone else, and . . . and I do care about you.’
Rosie’s eyes searched her friend’s face but although her mouth opened no words came out.
‘And so now it’s up to you.’
‘Me?’ When Flora let go of her hands Rosie plumped down on a kitchen chair. ‘What do you mean it’s up to me?’
‘Do you still love him?’
‘Love him?’ Suddenly the moment when Davey had taken her in his arms at the hospital was there and Rosie could feel her face burning. But she didn’t dodge the question. ‘Yes, I do.’ She inclined her head slowly with the affirmative. ‘But like you just said, that’s not fair is it? No one forced me to marry Zachariah, Flora, and if I was in the same position again as I was then I would do exactly the same thing. I - I loved him, very much. Not like Davey, but I did love him.’
‘Aye, I know you did, and he loved you an’ all.’
‘And with your mam and da and everything--’
‘No.’ It was the old impetuous Flora who interrupted her.
‘No, forget all that, lass, that’s nothing to do with it. This is
now
.’
There was a long moment of silence when the kettle on the hearth spluttered and hissed and the low moan of the wind outside emphasized the warm cosiness of the kitchen. Rosie looked towards the dark window for some seconds before turning to meet Flora’s eyes. And then she said, ‘Flora, are you sure about this? About what you are saying?’
‘Aye, I’m sure.’ Flora relaxed back in her seat, her shoulders slumping. ‘Davey thought you were seeing Shane McLinnie before, when he left all them years ago. He’d seen you that night in the snow - you remember you thought someone had passed by? - and he’d got the wrong idea, then he went to see Shane and you can imagine what Shane said.’ She lifted her head and looked at Rosie’s face and what she saw there made her continue quickly, ‘And I let him carry on thinking it but he knows the truth now. The thing is, all this’ - Flora waved her hand widely - ‘will stop him speaking. So . . . it’s up to you.’
Rosie looked into Flora’s soft grey eyes and their gaze caught and held for long moments before she got up and put her arms round the other girl, saying simply, ‘Thank you for telling me all this, lass.’
‘Something’s burning.’
‘What?’ It wasn’t what Rosie had expected, and then, as realization dawned, ‘Oh my goodness, Mr McLinnie’s parkin! I made it special as well ’cos it’s his favourite.’
The cake was black and smoking when Rosie rescued it from the oven and as the two women stared at the charred lump, Flora’s comment of, ‘Well, lass, he’d have to be mortalious to fancy that,’ suddenly struck them both as funny. Their laughter was loud and long and it relieved the tension, and when Flora left just before nine o’clock to catch the tram home, they hugged each other in a way they hadn’t done for years.
Flora had peeped in the nursery before she’d left and now, as Rosie watched her friend disappear down the street amid the swirling snow and icy wind, she recalled the soft longing in Flora’s face as she’d said, ‘I do so want a bairn, Rosie, and before I’m too old to enjoy it. I want lots of babies, one after the other. I want to fill a house with them.’ And her voice had been a statement of intent when she’d added, ‘Peter would make an excellent father.’
Rosie hadn’t known how to reply for a moment, but then Flora had looked at her, and the tacit plea for approval in the other girl’s face had helped her to say, ‘Yes, he would. He’s a lovely man, Flora.’
‘Aye, I know it.’ And then Flora’s voice had come more strongly. ‘I know it all right.’
It was another ten days before Rosie saw Davey, and then he only called at the house because she had sent a letter asking him to come. It had been a brief letter, terse almost, and anyone reading the few short lines would never have guessed that the writer had agonized over them for days.
Flora had related her conversation with Davey on New Year’s Eve word for word before she had left, and as the days after her friend’s visit had crept by and Rosie had waited in vain, she was forced to acknowledge Flora was right. It was up to her - again. What was it about her, she asked herself, that made men who loved her so tongue-tied? But that was silly; she had known what it was with Zachariah and she knew the obstacle that was holding Davey back. But it mustn’t, the money mustn’t keep them apart. She wouldn’t let it.
Since Flora’s revelation Rosie had alternated between wild elation and deep despair, often within the same sixty seconds. There was so much water under the bridge, they weren’t the young lad and lass they had been back in the carefree days of their youth. He had travelled, seen foreign parts, met other women . . . He would have slept with them. He would have. And there was her, she had been married for goodness’ sake, and she had a son to prove it. And she had loved Zachariah; she would never deny that love no matter what the cost. But he wouldn’t ask her to deny it, he had liked Zachariah, she knew that. Maybe they could work things out? But what if . . . And so it had gone on, questions and answers, questions and answers until she had thought she would go mad.
What would people say if they knew she had asked a man to call on her - and with her first husband having been laid to rest only eighteen months before - with the express purpose of encouraging him to ask her to marry him? She would be labelled a brazen huzzy and worse. Oh aye, she could hear them. The rich young widow and the handsome penniless labourer. Oh, they’d have a field day and no mistake. The tongues would be clacking from here to Newcastle. Did she care what people thought? She had asked herself this more than once and the answer was always the same. Only in as much as it might affect Erik.
Davey arrived at number seventeen The Terrace at exactly seven o’clock in the evening. She had thought about asking him for a meal but her courage hadn’t run to it, and now when she answered the door to his knock her face was burning with colour and quite at variance with the white frozen world outside, the glow suffusing her skin almost scarlet.
‘It was very good of you to come.’ It was formal, too formal, and she tried to lighten her tone as she added, ‘I’ve just put Erik to bed, he was asleep on his feet. We’ve been out in the fresh air most of the day building an igloo in the garden, of all things.’
‘An igloo?’ He raised dark eyebrows. He might have known she would aspire to something more ambitious than the average snowman.
He looked at her for a long moment and then, when he realized his eyes were feasting on her face, quickly glanced behind her as he said, ‘Shall I come in?’
‘Oh I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m thinking of. Please, come in.’ She was flustered and it showed.
Once in the sitting room she waved him to a chair, saying as she did so, ‘Would you care for a cup of tea?’
‘Thank you.’ He stood in front of the crackling fire, his tall lean body straight and stiff, and there was a brief embarrassing silence before Rosie said, ‘I’ll just go and . . .’ as she backed to the door.
Why had she asked him here? Once the door had shut behind Rosie Davey sank down into the proffered armchair, gazing round the bright attractive room as though it would provide the answer. Perhaps she was going to ask him what had happened between himself and Flora? She must know by now that the engagement was off; Flora had made no secret of the fact that she was seeing Peter again, but he had no idea how the news would have affected Rosie. Before Zachariah had died he would have bet his last penny that her feeling for him was still very much alive, in spite of the way she felt about her husband. But now? Since Zachariah’s death she had been reserved, cool even, until the night at the hospital. But she had needed a friendly face then, and likely that’s how she saw him now - merely as a friend.