After the Last Dance (23 page)

‘Are your people very top drawer, Phyllis?' Rose knew that Phyllis was an Hon, she'd even been presented at court before the war, but all this talk of wings and Long Galleries was rather daunting.

‘Hardly! We're not aristocracy, only landed gentry.'

It wasn't even a little bit reassuring.

Neither was Phyllis's mother, Lady Carfax, who looked at Rose with icy regard as if she suspected Rose had dirty fingernails and all manner of slovenly habits. Despite her chilly demeanour, Lady Carfax gave Phyllis and Rose
carte
blanche
to take whatever they wanted for the refugees.

On Sunday, fortified by a breakfast of egg and soldiers – a real egg laid by a chicken that very morning – Phyllis and Rose spent the morning battling cobwebs and opening packing crates in the attics. Their haul included several spiteful-looking Victorian dolls, two teddy bears who had seen better days, a doll's house complete with furniture, building blocks, a train-set, though half the track was missing, a stack of board games and a croquet set.

After a lunch of ham and leek pie, mostly leeks, they set off through the grounds to the stables, their destination the old barn where broken farm equipment, ancient lawnmowers and rusting pieces of metal that looked like medieval torture devices had been put out to grass. ‘I don't think there's going to be anything here that the refugees might want,' Rose said glumly, as she peered inside a rotting cardboard box that contained some mildewed seed catalogues.

‘There must be. Pa got a bit carried away when war was declared and ordered all sorts of things.' Phyllis scrambled over a barbaric contraption that looked like an old plough. ‘He had this notion he'd train up all the spare men in the village into a lethal killing force in the event of a Nazi invasion, but they spend most of their time doing drill practice on the village green.'

Rose gingerly followed Phyllis into the furthest reaches of the barn, cursing when she caught her tweed skirt on a nail.

‘Rose! Over here! You'll never guess what I've found!'

Still rolled up and wrapped in brown paper were ten canvas camp beds. Ten! There were also three Army & Navy crates absolutely chock-a-block with enamel mess tins and cups and cutlery, first aid kits and, improbably, several mosquito nets.

With the help of a young lad from the village who came up to do what he could in the gardens, they hauled their spoils into the yard to be packed in the same lorry that had brought them to Norfolk and would hopefully have enough room to take them back to London.

It was still light enough for a walk so Phyllis could show Rose the copse where she and her two elder brothers had built camps and picnicked when they were younger. The oldest, Anthony, had been stationed in Egypt, which they were all thankful for. ‘He'd like to see more action but I think Mummy's quite pleased that he isn't,' Phyllis said as they sat on a fallen log. ‘Teddy's in the Navy. I can't remember the last time we were all together. Isn't it odd that you take the everyday stuff for granted but that's what you miss most once it's gone?'

Rose had run away from her everyday stuff and she didn't miss it one bit. London was still enthralling and if she hadn't come to London, then she'd never have made it through the hallowed portals of Rainbow Corner. Never learned to jive. Never fallen in love. Fallen out of love. She'd never have become Rose Beaumont. ‘I don't care for the bombs or rationing or always worrying that something dreadful might happen to the people I care about, but the other bits of the war are quite exciting. Don't you think?'

Phyllis gazed out at the long grass studded with pretty pale yellow oxlips. ‘Well, without the war, I'd never have met you or Sylvia and Maggie.' She shook her head. ‘I never got to be friends with the glamorous girls at school so that's rather thrilling.'

‘Don't talk rot! You're just as glamorous as Sylvia or Maggie,' Rose said stoutly, but Phyllis wasn't and that was why Rose loved her. She was kind and steady and had a soppy, romantic heart, which used to be a perfect match for Rose's. But it was here that Phyllis really belonged – among the wildflowers and the hedgerows, the sweet fresh air. ‘Don't let's get maudlin. Didn't your Mrs Barnes say something about gingerbread? Come on, I'll race you back to the house!'

Three o'clock in the morning. Jane was wide awake and gritty-eyed. Leo might constantly complain that he couldn't sleep since he'd cut back on his drinking, but he was flat-out and gently snoring on the other side of the bed, one hand curled round their pillow chaperone.

The night stretched out before Jane. She tried a meditation exercise but it was hard to focus when all she could think about was Leo. But then she'd been worrying about Leo, as sleep remained just beyond her reach, ever since she'd taken his confession. Leo's problem was that he was too bloody fragile and Jane was an idiot not to have noticed that before.

Her other men might have hated Jane because she'd hurt their feelings, made them look foolish, bruised their pride, but that was normal collateral damage. More frequently, she'd been the one whose services had been brutally dispensed with.

But Leo… Jane wasn't a monster, or at least she didn't think she was, and she had no desire to break someone who couldn't put himself back together.

What am I going to do with you?
 

There was no point in lying there with her thoughts constantly circling back on themselves. So, carefully, because she didn't want to wake Leo, Jane slid out of bed and left the room.

It always gave Jane a thrill to glide through other people's homes in the dead of the night. She didn't rifle through drawers or poke her head into cupboards. She wasn't casing the joint or doing inventory but a house always gave up its secrets when you were the only one awake.

Jane knew what it was like to walk into a house and shiver and want to walk back out because the bad things that had happened were soaked into the walls, emitting invisible but toxic fumes. But Rose's house didn't feel like that at all. There was no terrible sense of foreboding when Jane walked into a room. Rose had been happy here.

She did a full sweep of the house, and then, just as she reached the top of the stairs, still not the least bit tired, she heard someone cry out. It wasn't loud but there was something so visceral about it that Jane's heart gave an emphatic warning thump.

The noise continued. It was coming from the far end of the corridor where Rose's rooms were and as Jane got closer the sound became words. ‘Oh God! Good God!' It was the brittle cry of a frightened old woman.

There was no reply when Jane tapped on the door. It opened onto a sitting room, another set of double doors leading through to a bedroom. Jane didn't turn on the lights but called out, ‘Rose? It's Jane. Are you all right?'

Rose cried out again, as if she couldn't even form words any more. And Jane had opened the door, made her presence known, so she was committed now. She turned on one of the lamps in the sitting room so she could see into the bedroom. Rose, her white nightgown rucked up, was slumped half-in, half-out of the bed. She seemed paralysed by the expectation that if she moved, reacted to the pain she was in with a jerk or a spasm, then the force might break the ghostly, pale limbs that Jane could see arranged in a haphazard fashion. Rose was no longer the calm, composed, utterly formidable woman Jane had encountered up until now.

‘I was just coming up the stairs when I heard you,' Jane said, as if Rose at this moment cared why Jane had suddenly appeared. ‘Are you in a lot of pain?'

Rose didn't speak or even turn her head, which was at an odd angle against the pillow.

‘What a silly question, of course you're in a lot of pain,' Jane said, approaching the bed. Now she could see Rose's face and she looked so frightened that it made Jane feel frightened too. But they couldn't both be frightened. That wouldn't achieve anything. ‘Were you trying to get out of bed? Do you need the loo? Or your pills?' Rose dipped her head once. ‘Are they in the bathroom?' Another dip.

Jane tried to settle Rose first, carefully swinging her legs round, then cradling her head so she could move the pillows, smooth out the wrinkled undersheet as best she could. Rose had her bottom lip caught between her teeth; once she grunted and clutched hold of Jane's arm, then subsided. ‘OK, you're safe now. I'm going to get your pills.'

She left the bathroom light on when she came back with tablets and a glass of water. ‘I thought it would probably be the tramadol. Can you sit up a little?'

Rose couldn't but Jane adjusted the pillows again and put a careful arm around her shoulders, placed two tablets on her tongue, then held the glass to her lips. ‘You're all right,' Jane said. She'd always been a good liar. ‘Don't try to talk. Just concentrate on little breaths in and out.'

She sat on the edge of the bed and held Rose's hand, stroking the back of her knuckles to the rhythm of Rose's shaky breaths, which got steadier as the pain obviously receded. Rose's skin was thin and papery smooth, like vintage silk dresses that ripped too easily if you weren't careful with them.

Then Rose opened her eyes. ‘That's better,' she said, as if she'd taken a sip of strong, restorative tea. ‘I'm so silly. Usually I make sure that everything's on my bedside table before I go to sleep.'

‘Do you normally wake up like that in the middle of the night?' Jane asked.

‘Do you normally walk round other people's houses in the middle of the night?' Rose countered.

Jane held up her hands. ‘You can frisk me to make sure I haven't stashed the family silver anywhere.' Rose was still too rumpled and trembling for her to be as intimidating as she was normally. ‘Do you always wake up in that kind of pain?'

Rose folded her hands. ‘Of course not. As I said, I usually have my tablets by my side but I'd been out with George and I was so tired when I got home, I must have skipped a dose.'

‘It's been what, darling? Half an hour since you took those pills and you're still shaking. They should have done more than take the edge off by now. Maybe you should be on something stronger.'

‘It's really none of your business.' Irascible old ladies really weren't in Jane's purview. Her own grandmother had died when Jane was six or seven. She'd seemed old because she was swollen and corroded from all the men and the booze and God knows what else, but it wasn't until Jane had got a little older, done the maths, that she'd realised Nana Jo had died in her forties. She hadn't been so bad as grandmothers went – she was a cheerful, functioning drunk who could throw some cereal into bowls and send them off to school – but when she died any semblance of normality went with her and all that was left was the greasy mark on the sofa where she'd sat day in and day out.

There had been a great-grandmother too, a white-haired lady with a neat little garden and a neat little house in a neat little village a few miles away.

She'd gone there once, mainly to corral the little ones, while her mam hammered on the door, which was painted a sunny yellow. ‘Granny Annie! Come out and meet the kiddies.'

Jane had stood there while the little ones rampaged through the neat garden. Her mam had told them to stop the once, but when Granny Annie was still a no-show, despite the demands to come out and give them a kiss, then demands to come out and give them some money, she'd laughed as they'd pulled up flowers and kicked dirt in each other's faces. Jane had sat on the wall and seen an anxious little face peering out of an upstairs window. Their eyes had met for a second, then the face disappeared behind the net curtains and a patrol car had turned up.

She'd picked up the littlest one and shoved him back in his pushchair, a cuff around the head from her mam all the thanks she got. ‘Fucking move it,' she'd said and she was gone. Head down, she'd followed with the buggy and the three other kids, who jostled each other and jeered at the two policemen who'd got out of the car and stood there, arms folded.

Rose was nothing like Nana Jo or Granny Annie. ‘You seem to know an awful lot about drugs, my dear,' she was saying now. ‘Is that something you and Leo have in common?'

‘Never touch them, but I've known a few people who have, and yours aren't working.' For a moment, she had another one of those pangs of something that might have been empathy for Leo. Now that she was in her right mind again, Rose was intractable and quite capable of withholding her forgiveness, and her fortune, no matter how much Leo might deserve them. ‘Of course, it's none of my business, but I don't understand why you'd want to be in pain.'

‘Of course I don't want to be in pain but neither do I want my mind fogged up with drugs. Then there'd suddenly be nurses and carers, strangers, traipsing all over my home.' Rose sounded petulant. ‘Or worse, I'd become so enfeebled that they stick me in a hospice. Linda means well, but she wanted me to take a tour of a place out in the middle of Hertfordshire called Peaceful Meadows. Peaceful Meadows! Quite frankly, I'd rather blow my brains out with my grandfather's old shotgun.'

There wasn't much Jane could say to that so she sat there silently. Rose seemed exhausted by her own defiance, because she leaned back against the pillows and closed her eyes.

‘Well, at least you're feeling more settled now,' Jane said as she stood up carefully so as not to disturb the older woman. ‘You're right, it has to be your decision, but I can't simply ignore the fact that you're in pain and your drugs aren't working.'

‘It's one bad night. Let's not get carried away.'

Jane had done her best and that was all she could do. If Rose woke up at the same time tomorrow night with the pain snapping at her, then it wasn't Jane's problem – except she'd made it her problem as soon as she'd opened the door to Rose's suite and now she needed to find a solution that would benefit all interested parties. It was a tricky one. Jane stepped into the bathroom to turn off the light and when she came out, she'd decided on a course of action.

‘What I did tonight, well, that's about my limit, darling,' she said to Rose, who was carefully easing herself into a horizontal position. ‘I'm really not cut out for bedpans or anything involving bodily fluids.'

They looked at each other for a long moment, the only light coming from the sitting room. It was hard to remember that thirty minutes ago Rose had been struck dumb and useless by pain when now she was smiling. It was a cagey smile, not anything you could trust.

‘Well, I'm glad to hear that, because I'm not cut out for them either,' Rose said crisply. ‘Also, your bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired.' She smiled again. ‘How odd. I'd have thought that would have been one area you'd have excelled in.'

Rose's acidic response made what Jane had to say a little easier. She put her hands on her hips. ‘If you keep being this vile, then I'd be well within my rights to smother you with one of your fancy hundred-quid cushions and put all of us out of our misery.'

Jane would have bet that not many people got to see Rose look shocked, her mouth and eyes three wide circles of surprise. She'd also lay even odds on the fact that not many people had ever rendered Rose speechless.

‘I do understand, I really do. You're in pain. But it's pointless you suffering and making everyone around you suffer,' Jane said as she marched towards the door. Then she turned to look back at Rose, who was still sitting there, the very definition of aghast. ‘Do what you have to do: phone your doctor, get a different prescription, whatever. But if you don't, then I'm calling Linda and she can come down to London and ship you off to Peaceful Meadows. It's your call, darling.'

 

As soon as he opened his eyes, Leo knew from the way sunlight slanted through the curtains that it was much later than seven-thirty, the time that Jane normally shook him awake before she left for her torturous hot yoga class. She was still fast asleep next to him, curled into a tight ball with only the top of her head visible.

When he dashed out of the house a few minutes later, Rose's car was thankfully still idling at the kerb.

‘Another thirty seconds and you'd have had to walk,' Frank told Leo cheerfully as Leo slid into the back seat next to Rose.

She was looking out of the window at the little square and didn't acknowledge his presence in any way. Rose never looked pleased to see him, Leo was used to that, but cutting him entirely was something new. Yesterday he'd instigated an impromptu game of football until Mark had come back from the builders' yard and given them a bollocking. Maybe Rose had heard about that.

Leo glanced over at Rose, her face in profile. When you saw someone every day, you didn't notice them changing. But he'd only been back two weeks or so and the Rose that was fixed in Leo's mind was still much younger, much more vital than this Rose, so that every time he saw her, it was a shock. And every time he saw her, he was sure she was a little more faded than the day before.

‘Rose?' he prompted as Frank pulled away from the kerb.

She half turned and flinched a little. ‘Oh, it's you, Leo. I was a thousand miles away.' Even her smile was a little muted, something tugging down its corners. ‘Overslept? I didn't think you'd gone out last night.'

He ignored the implication that he'd been too sauced to wake up on time. ‘Jane didn't go to her yoga class so I had no one to poke and prod at me until I got out of bed. I really should set the alarm on my phone.'

‘You really should,' Rose said sharply so Leo was immediately on his guard and guilty for all the things he'd done, even the things he hadn't done. ‘Now about that girl, that Jane of yours.'

‘She's not mine —'

‘Unspeakably rude. She
threatened
me,' Rose muttered. ‘You must keep her in line.'

‘Marriage doesn't really work like that these days,' Leo said, like he was any expert. ‘What do you mean, she
threatened
you?'

Rose sighed, an aggrieved little huff. ‘I'll concede that talking of smothering me with one of my Neisha Crosland cushions might have been a joke, albeit in very poor taste, but there was nothing funny about wanting to call your mother so she could cart me off to a hospice.'