A Girl Called Rosie (26 page)

Rosie fetched a clean towel from the linen cupboard and together they washed their hands
in the icy cold water that gushed fiercely from the single tap over the large, square Belfast sink.

‘You’ve done very well, Rosie, especially when you had to work out what was happening. I wish some of the nurses I worked with in London could keep so calm.’

‘I didn’t feel calm. I was really upset I didn’t know what was going to happen next, till you told me.’

‘It’s not what you feel, Rosie. It’s what you
do
. But it’s sad poor Lizzie had such a fright, because she was so ill-informed. Didn’t you do any biology at Miss Wilson’s?’

Rosie burst out laughing as they shared the towel to dry their hands.

‘The life cycle of the butterfly, the circulation of the blood and the germination of sunflower seeds.’

‘You’re joking! No, you’re not. You’re serious.’

‘Dear Miss Wilson, she is lovely and kind and full of wisdom about how one copes with the difficulties of living and growing up, but she never married and she thinks such things are not to be spoken of.’

‘It could have been
very
unhappy for Lizzie.’

She nodded and opened the cupboard door to see whether there really were eggs or not.

‘Rosie, there’s something I want to ask you.’

‘Mmm,’ she said, her back to him, as she found a whole rack of eggs, began to pick them up and count them into a bowl.

‘I can think of no more unsuitable place than our present surroundings. I had quite other plans, but after being patient a whole year, I cannot wait a minute longer. Rosie, will you marry me? As soon as possible. Please.’

She put the bowl of eggs down on the table as if it were very fragile, turned round and looked at him. He stood leaning against the sink, the one place where he wouldn’t get in her way if she moved between the cupboard and the stove. She could not quite make out the look in his eyes. Excitement. Anxiety, perhaps. Some mixture of both.

‘Yes, Richard, I will. As soon as you want, but just suddenly I think I need to sit down.’

It was seven o’clock on Saturday evening when the very last rose petal was picked up from the marble floor of the City Hall. Dismantling the stand seemed to take no time at all in comparison with the long hours of putting it together the previous Sunday, working behind closed doors, aware of the empty streets of the city and the echoing peal of church bells.

The Northern Ireland Trade Fair had been a huge success. Not only for McGredy’s, whose order books were full, but for most of the other companies who had put their goods on show or advertised their services. Mr Sam had been delighted, had given
them all a bonus and said that all those who had worked so hard in Belfast should take Monday and Tuesday off.

As she drove back home to Portadown in the company’s van, squeezed into the front seat between Billy and Mary, the van full of the paraphernalia of the display, she looked back on the week just past as over a huge landscape viewed from the top of a hill.

So many successes and such unexpected joy.

Apart from Lizzie, no one yet knew of her engagement to Richard. Tomorrow he would be coming over to meet her parents and to take her back to Rathdrum for her promised visit to her grandmother. She’d no idea what her mother would say to Richard, or whether she would even be there to greet him, but of her father’s response she had little doubt. Granny had spoken often enough of the qualities of her godson and Da knew how good her judgement was.

She could see his face and that slow smile, so much more frequent these days. It reminded her of a particular smile she would never forget. It was a genuine coincidence that Uncle James, as she now called him, had come back from a visit to the new government building at Stormont on Friday afternoon and paused by the stand merely to say a friendly word and ask her how the day was going.

Her father was studying the postcards she’d
painted in the barn throughout the winter and spring. Bobby and Charlie were standing beside him, blocking him from view. Sam had already been introduced to Mary, who was fixing a fragment of foliage behind a rosebud to give to him, when he turned round unexpectedly and found himself face to face with the man she’d first known as Slater Hamilton.

‘Hallo, Sam.’

‘Hallo, James.’

Neither had the slightest doubt about whom the other was, nor was there the slightest awkwardness between them. Rosie did wonder if Granny had been in touch with them both. But what really held her was that slow smile of her father’s, the enthusiasm with which he introduced Bobby and Charlie to ‘Uncle James’ and the way they all stood and talked together before Uncle James had to go back up to his office for the final meeting of his day.

‘There ye are Mary. Back home. An’ I won’t see you till Wednesday.’

Billy drew up at the end of the long lane that ran up to the farm where Mary lived with her family. Rosie watched her go, still wearing her pale pink blouse and her moss green overall, a girl for whom the week in Belfast had been a visit to a different world.

‘My goodness, she’s come on,’ said Billy, as he
put the van back in gear. ‘She wouldn’t have said boo to a goose a week ago and I heard her doing Brian’s job the day when he was out for his lunch. An’ doin’ it as well as he would. She’s no dozer, Mary.’

‘There’s more to us girls than meets the eye, Billy,’ she said, teasing him.

‘Well, I foun’ that out when you turned up a year ago.’

They fell silent, weary after such a tremendous effort, the shadows lengthening as they drove along the familiar road. They moved gently down the dip where the big load had got stuck, passed the new garden wall where Mary Braithwaite’s plants were now a mass of bloom. Two miles on Billy turned down the lane to Richhill Station and swung into the yard.

‘That’s you now, Rosie. Enjoy your wee holiday. I’ll see you Wednesday. Have you roses in the back?’

She collected a last armful of roses, fresh yesterday and likely to last four or five days more, and stood waiting as he turned in the yard and drove back out on to the lane. She waved him goodbye and walked slowly towards the open door of the house. Her father’s bicycle was parked in its usual place against the wall of the barn and smoke rose from a fresh fire.

It seemed a long, long way from the night her
grandfather had been taken ill and she’d spent the week of his dying getting to know the man she loved and soon would marry.

Sure a good thing’s worth waiting for
.

Her grandfather’s words came back to her as his words so often did. She remembered too what her grandmother had said back in the winter when they’d talked about Richard.

Granny had been right. He
had
been waiting. And Granda was right too. Richard’s waiting had given her time to make a life of her own and at this moment she was quite sure their future together would be all the richer for it.

NEXT IN THE SERIES

FOR MANY A LONG DAY

For Sam Hamilton and Robert Scott, the world has changed greatly since the days when they played outside the Salter’s Grange forge where their fathers worked together. Now in their fifties, with families of their own, they are grateful to have work at a time when nearly three million people in the country are unemployed.

But they have little joy in their wives, Martha and Ellen, and even less support when they are faced with the unhappiness of a son or daughter. Set in the Ulster of the 1930s,
For Many a Long Day
continues the story of the Hamiltons and their friends and neighbours through that troubled decade. It focuses on the heartache of Sam’s younger son and namesake, and the loneliness and anxiety of Robert’s beloved youngest daughter, Ellie.

This is a tale of courage and friendship, of disappointment and achievement, and ultimately of the triumph of love.

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A
NNE
D
OUGHTY
was born in Armagh, Northern Ireland. She is the author of twelve novels including
A Few Late Roses
which was longlisted for the
Irish Times
fiction prize. After many years living in England she returned to Belfast in 1998 and wrote the first of the novels that make up the Hamiltons series.

The Woman from Kerry

The Hamiltons of Ballydown

The Hawthorns Bloom in May

A Girl Called Rosie

For Many a Long Day

Shadow on the Land

On a Clear Day

Beyond the Green Hills