In the two years Percy had been observing them, they had both changed. Gareth had been just a lad when he first came, lean and eager-looking, with tousled curly hair and a wide, wide smile. He was a man now, heavier, fatter in the face, broader in the shoulders, his hair cut very short. Sadly, his sparkle and youthful enthusiasm seemed to have disappeared, along with his boyish curls. Nowadays he rarely smiled at Percy, much less stopped to chat about trains as he once had. In fact the only conversation they’d had in recent months was when Gareth pompously informed him he’d been promoted to engine driver on a passenger train.
Rosie had been a pretty girl with an endearing impudent grin, but she’d been too thin then and very pasty. Two years of healthy outdoor living had transformed her into a curvy, radiant beauty, with an aura of natural confidence and a bounce in her step.
Tonight she looked the way she always did when she was with Gareth, fashionable and stylish, in a green dress, high-heeled shoes and lipstick, her hair gleaming like molten copper in the weak sunshine. But Percy personally preferred the tomboyish way she looked when she trundled her wheelbarrow past the station during the week. There was something very appealing about a pretty girl in dungarees with windswept hair and a few dirt smears on her rosy cheeks. She was the kind of girl who made the day a little brighter just by being there, and Percy knew he wasn’t the only person around here who felt that way.
Percy leaned on his broom for a moment and watched them. He had an inkling of what was wrong tonight. Young Gareth was a dyed-in-the-wool city man, who only really liked the countryside when he was steaming through it on his train. Perhaps he’d finally realized Rosie and he were on quite different tracks.
Percy was almost spot on. Gareth was sulking, just as he had been since arriving on Saturday afternoon to find it too wet to do anything but stay indoors at The Grange. But now, after a long, dull weekend with no chance to be alone with Rosie, he was blaming her for his boredom.
‘I don’t know how much longer you expect me to put up with this,’ he said. ‘If you’d started nursing last year, like you said you were going to, at least you’d be in London. But you think more of your damn gardening and Donald than you do about me.’
Rosie sighed. He’d been spoiling for a fight all weekend, picking on every last thing he thought might upset her. She was tempted to say she did prefer gardening and Donald’s company when he was so objectionable, but his train would be here in five minutes and she didn’t want to part on a sour note.
‘That’s not true,’ she said.
‘Yes, it is. A year ago you were dying to get married, but now you hardly ever mention it.’
‘I’d get married tomorrow if you got a transfer down here,’ she said heatedly. ‘We could easily find a nice little cottage to live in. I don’t understand why you are so set on staying in London.’
‘You know why,’ he said, his voice raised as it always was when she broached this subject. ‘I’ve waited a long time to be a train driver. I won’t settle for ticket collecting or working in a signal box, which is what a transfer would mean. Besides, my family are in London, and I don’t like the country anyway.’
The distant chugging of the train coming along the track was a timely diversion. Gareth pulled out his pocket-watch to check it, just as he did with every single train. Rosie used to find this endearing. Tonight, however, it irritated her and she had an urge to slap the watch out of his hand.
‘Right on time,’ he said. ‘I expected it to be late because of the heavy rain.’
He kissed her then, long and hard, but it didn’t make Rosie feel any better. She knew the time in between before they saw each other again wouldn’t change anything. Their problems would only be shelved, to be picked over again next time they met and never resolved.
‘Goodbye, sweetheart,’ he said, picking up his overnight bag as the train came in. His eyes brightened as if the train itself was more important than her. ‘I’ll phone you later in the week.’
The train pulled off. He lowered the window and leaned out, and Rosie ran along the platform with it just as she always did, waving and blowing kisses. But tonight she didn’t feel the usual unbearable sadness at parting from him. It was almost a relief to see him go.
She didn’t go straight home to The Grange, but went for a walk instead. The song ‘Love and Marriage’ by Frank Sinatra, which had been in the hit parade earlier that year, kept springing irritatingly into her mind. The trees were dripping and her shoes weren’t suitable for walking on wet grass, but the air was fresh and sweet after all the rain and she needed time, alone, to think.
The weekend had been tortuous. In fact their relationship had been on a gradual downward spiral for some months, ever since Rosie admitted she had given up the idea of becoming a nurse. Gareth claimed she had been stringing him along all the time.
It hadn’t seemed that way to Rosie. Maybe she shouldn’t have assumed Gareth shared her vision of a wedding in Mayfield church, a cosy little cottage and the Cooks close by. But if Gareth really had hated this idea, why had be taken so long to come out with it?
Now he was saying that if she really loved him she must give up her gardening and the Cooks and move to London to get what he called a ‘proper’ job. He spoke of getting a couple of rooms somewhere near Clapham, and putting their name down for a council house. He didn’t seem to understand he was asking her to throw away everything she had worked so hard for.
She wasn’t entirely against the idea of living in London. At times it looked like a tempting adventure, starting out again, together, building a home, seeing all that London had to offer. Maybe she could even persuade him into letting her do gardening there. Thomas said there were plenty of rich people who were always looking for help with their gardens. Yet how could she just up and leave Donald? Setting aside that she loved him and his family, in their time together they had gone from being nurse and patient to teacher and pupil, until at last they’d become equal partners by pooling their talents.
Gareth always sneered when she tried to explain this. He said Donald could easily carry on alone mowing lawns, pruning trees and planting flowers. That much was true, he could; but Rosie was the one with the organizing ability and the creativity. Just as she relied on Donald’s physical strength to get the work done, so he depended on her to plan, find new clients and make sure they got paid.
Their business was thriving, they were making real money, more most weeks than Gareth made as a train driver. They had won the respect and admiration of everyone in the village. They were very proud of what they’d already achieved and Rosie wanted them to do much more. At night she worked on designs, she studied books on rare plants and famous gardens, and she knew if she was ever offered the opportunity to plan a garden herself from scratch, she could manage.
As much as she loved and wanted to marry Gareth, she also wanted to work at her chosen career. Could she do that if she was Mrs Jones, the train driver’s wife?
May be she was being ridiculously pessimistic. Other girls of her own age thought no further than getting married, having a home of their own, and waiting for their first baby. Wouldn’t that be fulfilling enough for her?
Being close to Gareth’s mother was another problem. In two years Rosie hadn’t grown to like the mean-spirited, sharp-tongued woman any better. Doubtless it was Mrs Jones who had poured cold water on the idea of a country cottage, who insisted her son could never be happy with Rosie unless he got her away from the Cooks to London. Once they were married, Rosie knew the woman would poke her nose into every aspect of their life. But it was Gareth’s dislike of the country that worried her even more. It said they were totally incompatible.
She climbed up on to a stile and sat down on it. In front of her was a field of golden wheat, gently swaying in the breeze. Beyond that was a small wood where nightingales sang. As she sat there revelling in the beauty and tranquillity of the scene, she wondered how anyone could prefer London’s grimy streets to this. She remembered how Donald had been when she had first brought him out here. He had sat on this very stile just gazing at the view with a broad smile on his face. Like her he never tired of it, whether it was spring when the first bright green shoots sprang out from the soil, autumn when the farmer ploughed the field and hundreds of birds came down for the rich pickings he uncovered for them, or winter when the bare soil was frozen into stiff, frosted furrows. It was at its most beautiful now, yet Gareth had remained unmoved by it.
In fact, Rosie had found few things that did move Gareth. The sight of the
Brighton Belle
or the
Flying Scotsman
with a full head of steam got him excited. His eyes grew misty when he looked at a powerful motorbike, and he became emotional when Wales beat England at rugby. But nature didn’t touch him at all.
There were other areas in their relationship which worried her too. He could go out drinking with his pals in London and cheerfully spend half his wages in one night, but with her he insisted on getting the cheapest seats at the pictures, and if they went out for the day somewhere, he would always find a grubby little back street café to eat in.
He was also a very selfish lover. Rosie sighed deeply. Perhaps she was to blame for this. Why didn’t she tell him she felt like a whore when he pushed her into masturbating him without trying to please her too? He seemed to think that protecting her from getting pregnant was an act of selfless love, but to her it appeared unnatural, cold and calculating. The trouble was she’d left it too long to start complaining now.
‘So what is it you love about him?’ she asked herself aloud.
That question was like asking why someone adored the sea, thrilled to a particular piece of music or wept at a film. She couldn’t analyse what it was about him that made her pulse quicken as she ran to meet him at the station, her knees shake when he kissed her; it was pure emotion. She wanted to make love with him, walk down leafy lanes holding his hand, cook him meals, have his children. It didn’t make sense. But then what made some men want to climb mountains, others to be a butcher? Everyone was different, and they didn’t march to the same drumbeat.
Above all else, though, Rosie was stubborn. In the main it was one of her greatest assets: she never gave up on a difficult job, finishing it when everyone else was sure she’d abandon it. She wasn’t going to give up on Gareth either, even if common sense told her it might be better to. Next time she saw him she would try and iron out some of the serious differences between them. There had to be a solution.
Back at The Grange, Norah and Frank were taking a stroll round the garden together. It was at its best: the rain had made the lawn a lush green again and the herbaceous border was a riot of colour. Donald was indoors. They could hear him playing ‘Rock Around the Clock’ on the radiogram. He loved rock ‘n’ roll music; he bought a new record every week with his gardening money, but this one was still his favourite. Often in the evenings he and Rosie practised jiving together. Donald was surprisingly good at it, as long as he didn’t get too excited.
‘What’s happened to Rosie and Gareth?’ Frank asked his wife. ‘They used to seem so perfect together, but not any more.’
‘I know,’ Norah sighed. ‘I thought they were for ever too, but Gareth’s changed, hasn’t he? He’s becoming so opinionated and pompous. Did you hear him holding forth to Michael on Saturday about third-class travel being abolished? Poor Michael didn’t know what to say, he didn’t have any views on it one way or another, and to hear Gareth going on you’d think we were aristocrats with no understanding of working-class people.’
Frank stopped by the pond and sat down on one of the big stones beside it. The water lilies were so thick on the surface he had to part them to see the fish below.
‘It’s the way he belittles Rosie which worries me more than anything,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I can understand his sarcasm towards Donald. He’s jealous of Rosie’s affection for him. But he never misses an opportunity to ridicule her gardening. You’d think he’d be so proud that she’s entirely self-taught. She astounds me the way she’s learned all about fertilizers and making compost, laying paths and building walls, along with acquiring an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of plants. I want to shake him and knock some sense into him.’
‘I suppose frustration is at the bottom of it,’ Norah said quietly, sitting down beside her husband and leaning against his shoulder. ‘I used to worry that Rosie would come home one day and tell us she was pregnant. I’m very glad of course that they’re so sensible and controlled, but it’s not exactly normal in a couple who love each other so much.’
Frank grinned and picked up her hand to kiss her finger tips affectionately. ‘No one could ever accuse us of being sensible and controlled,’ he said. ‘I seem to remember we were like rabbits once we got started.’
Norah blushed. Why she didn’t find herself pregnant before they married had always been a mystery to her. ‘Somehow I don’t think the control is on Rosie’s side,’ she said. ‘I think he makes all the rules. I suspect that fearsome mother of his has warped him to a certain extent. Have you noticed he rarely reveals anything personal about himself?’
‘Well, I suppose we could say the same about Rosie,’ Frank said evenly.
‘No, it’s not the same,’ Norah disagreed. ‘Rosie doesn’t like discussing her childhood, but she is open about her feelings and about what she wants out of life. I feel as if I know her inside out.’
Frank smiled. ‘So what does she want, aside from Gareth?’
‘The same as most women. A decent home of her own, a kind, loving man and a parcel of kids. Sometimes I’m very glad she feels so strongly about Donald. But for him she might have gone off to London a long while ago. At least it’s holding her back from making any rash decisions.’
They both looked round as their son stepped out on to the terrace by the kitchen. He was pretending to play the guitar and was entirely oblivious to his parents watching him. Hardly a day went by without them considering how much Rosie had enriched his life. They liked her for herself, but they loved her for what she’d given Donald.