Cherrybrook Rose (2 page)

Her full red lips broke into a short laugh. ‘Flattery will get you nowhere with me!' she chided playfully.

Ned sniffed. She was certainly right there! He had never got so much as a harmless kiss out of Rose Maddiford. It was as if she was unaware of her tantalizing charms. She was devoted to one man alone, and that was her father!

‘You off to visit young Molly?' Ned asked, his chest giving a little jerk of jealousy as his generous mouth curled at one corner.

‘
Miss
Molly to you!' Rose grinned. ‘But, yes, I am. So you will look after Gospel for me, won't you? There'll be sixpence in it for you, as usual.'

Ned grunted his displeasure. If it weren't for Rose, he wouldn't have gone near the animal for two guineas, let alone sixpence! Bad-tempered creature it was, at least it was the minute Rose was out of its sight. Black as the devil, and that would have been a better name for it, Devil! Ned thought. As for calling it Gospel, well! When he had questioned Rose on her strange choice, he hadn't quite fathomed her explanation. It was something to do with the monster's dark coat, and the religious chants that the African slaves in the American cotton fields apparently sang to ease their aching spirits. Well, Ned didn't know anything about
that
. He didn't even know where America and Africa were! A long way off, he knew that. But then to Ned so was anywhere beyond Plymouth, which he visited possibly once a year. Back along, there had been American as well as French prisoners of war held in what was now the convict gaol that stood within spitting distance of the Albert Inn. So America couldn't be
that
far away, Ned reasoned. Americans spoke English, so America must be nearer than France, where they gabbled in some incomprehensible language – or at least, Ned imagined they did. But, to be honest, he wasn't really bothered where other countries might be. It hardly made any difference to
his
life, did it? He could write his own name when he put his mind to it, which was more than his parents could, and that was enough for him.

Except when it came to Rose. Then, and only then, did his ignorance trouble him. Rose
devoured
books. She adored Jane Austen's novels – whoever she was – and now she was reading this controversial fellow Charles Dickens. And how she would love to see a theatre production of
Macbeth
. It was set in the Highlands of Scotland, but couldn't you imagine it happening amongst the wild and spectacular beauty of Dartmoor? Ned had nodded cautiously, praying it was sufficient response. He knew she read the
Tavistock Gazette
each week from cover to cover, for it reported not only local news, but national and international events as well, events she evidently discussed at length with her father. It was no wonder she was way out of Ned's league.
And
out of the league of virtually every young male in the vicinity, although plenty of them wouldn't have minded getting their hands on her virginal figure!

‘You can put that nag of yourn in the end box,' he ordered with a disgruntled snort. ‘And take its tack off yoursel, if you wants to.
I'll
not go near the brute.'

Rose raised a teasing eyebrow as Gospel nuzzled against her shoulder and she stroked his arching neck in response. ‘You're not afeared, are you, Ned?' she asked.

Ned flushed. But he wasn't going to let Rose's clever tongue get the better of him, so he threw back his head with a throaty laugh. ‘No. But the marks 'aven't quite faded from the last time 'e bit me, and I doesn't want a matching set just yet.'

It was Rose's turn to look abashed. ‘I'm really sorry about that,' she said with feeling. ‘Of course I'll see to him myself. I'm just grateful to have somewhere safe I can leave him.' And so saying, she clicked her tongue and led the infamous beast into the stable Ned had indicated, emerging a few minutes later with the heavy saddle, which the youth was pleased to take from her, delighted at the opportunity to show her some gallantry. He lowered his eyes to the gleaming leather with a lecherous smirk. An
astride
saddle, of course. But that was Rose Maddiford for you, wasn't it! And his heart sighed as he watched her stride out of the yard.

Rose hurried down Prison Road with a spring in her step. Not that she had far to go, but the prospect of spending a few hours in the company of her good friend, Molly Cartwright, filled her with happiness. As she left the relative tranquillity of the village behind, a general bustle of activity took its place in the warm, early autumn sunshine. Just beyond the encircling wall of the barracks which was her destination, work was continuing apace on the new accommodation block for the prison warders and their families. Molly's mother was praying they would be allocated one of its thirty flats, each of which was to boast two tiny bedrooms, a small living room and a working scullery. And who could blame her, when two adults – three if you counted Molly, who was nineteen – and five younger children had been squeezed into just two rooms in the decaying barracks for years!

Rose paused for a moment to contemplate the progress on the new building, which was to be named, most imaginatively, she mocked, Number One Warders' Block. There was some way to go before it was finished, despite the convicts that swarmed over the growing edifice like ants in their drab uniforms with the distinctive arrows. And they
worked
like ants, too, at least they did if they didn't want to feel a warder's truncheon across their back. The term ‘hard labour' was somewhat of an understatement, Rose always thought. Inhuman it was sometimes, in her opinion, gruelling, non-stop physical toil on prison buildings that were being doubled or trebled in size from the original prisoner-of-war blocks, or out on the extensive prison lands, clearing them of granite boulders or working up to the waist in cold water as they dug drainage ditches, all to extend the workable areas of the prison farm. If not that, then digging mountains of peat for the new gasworks just outside the prison wall which supplied light for the prison itself and all prison property within the village, or slaving on the public roads or in the prison quarry a hundred yards or so further down towards Rundlestone. It was no wonder a convict would suddenly lose his reason and, in a moment of madness, make a dash across the moor, even knowing the armed warders or Civil Guard who accompanied all outside work parties would shoot him down. Still, if you didn't like it, you shouldn't have come, was the old prison saying. Hardened criminals, most of them, violent, incorrigible villains. Though some were merely habitual thieves or forgers, innocent of any physical violence, but sentenced to a minimum of five years to qualify for Dartmoor's infamous gaol. But what if, Rose's questioning mind considered, you really were wrongfully convicted . . .

She flicked her head as if tossing out the unwelcome thought, kicked the hem of her riding skirt out of the way of her strong, athletic legs, and marched through the gateway of the barracks compound. She braced herself against the coming onslaught from the Cartwright family, and then stepped across the yard, greeting people as she went. A woman was lugging a basket overflowing with laundry to the little hexagonal wash-house in the centre of the compound which served the hundred or more families who were crowded into the eleven barracks. Children too young to attend the new prison officers' school – built and maintained, it went without saying, by convict labour – played safely outside in the sunshine, amongst them the youngest of the Cartwright clan. The wife of one of the twenty-four Civil Guards, younger, fitter men who were all housed in Number Six barracks, was leaning against a wall, her stomach jutting with her first child, as she chatted to a neighbour. Rose hailed them all as she passed, and then bound up the outside steps to the humble dwelling in Number Seven barracks.

The small front room was a jumble of garments and linen, for Molly and her mother were tackling the weekly mountain of ironing, taking it in turns to do the ironing itself whilst the other folded the pressed articles and hung them over the wooden slats of the airing rack which would later be hoisted to the ceiling. The air was heavy with warmth and moisture, a strange mix of the freshness of ironing and the acrid smell of the peat fire that smouldered in the small grate where the two spare irons were reheating whilst Mrs Cartwright used the third.

‘Oh, Rose! How lovely to see you!'

Molly's naturally pale cheeks were flushed with the afternoon's activity and she pushed back a wayward wisp of light ginger hair that had escaped from beneath the plain white muslin cap on her head. Her small but well-shaped mouth broke into a grin, and above it, her eyes, a distinct feline green, danced with delight.

‘Well,' Rose replied with an exaggerated tilt of her head, ‘I'd not seen you for a week and I wanted to make certain you were behaving yourself.'

A faint smile lifted Mrs Cartwright's work-worn face at their irrepressible visitor, but with eight mouths to feed and the apparel of eight bodies to launder, she had no time to stop and chat. But Rose always brought a breath of fresh air into their humdrum lives, and was always welcome. Besides, she was a lady, and perhaps one day some practical advantage might come of their association and lift Molly from the drab future she faced at present.

Molly's lips, however, twisted into a mock grimace. ‘Behave myself!' she groaned. ‘And what chance d'you imagine I'd have to do ort else?'

‘Well, I don't know! Perhaps one of the new Civil Guards?' Rose teased. ‘There's one particularly attractive fellow . . . Why don't we walk down to the quarry and see if he's on duty there?'

‘Oh, Rose, you'm a real devil!' Molly chuckled. ‘But I cas'n. Look at this pile of ironing! The girls'll be home from school directly, and we must get it finished by then.'

‘Let me help, then.' And throwing her riding gloves on to the bed Molly shared with the elder two of her three younger sisters, Rose unfastened the jacket of her riding habit, tossed it on top of the gloves and rolled up the sleeves of her shirt. ‘Now, what can I do? Or would it be more use to you if I started preparing the meal?'

Mrs Cartwright shook her head. That was Rose for you! Heart as big as the ocean. And it wasn't an empty gesture. The girl knew how to cook, sew and iron, and would work as hard as any of them. And so it was that by the time the three younger siblings arrived back from school the laundry was stowed away on the airing rack, Rose had rescued little Philip from the compound and cleaned him up and a pile of bread and dripping was waiting on the table next to a heap of vegetables prepared by Rose's hand ready for the cooking pot for supper. She supervised the tea, entertained the children and helped wash up, while Mrs Cartwright sat with her feet up, sipping the hot brew from a chipped enamel mug. So that by five o'clock the two young women were able to set out, arm in arm, down the road towards Rundlestone.

Work on the new accommodation block would soon be stopping for the night, and Molly paused to glance ruefully at its progress. ‘I do hope as we gets one of they flats!' she breathed with feeling, her full breasts rising and falling in a deep sigh. ‘'Tis so cramped in the barracks and we're all getting so big.'

Rose looked askew at her friend, her heart torn. It was hard to know quite what to say. She felt so sorry for the Cartwright family, but she didn't want to offend. ‘What about Brian? Could he not be moving out soon? He
is
sixteen.'

Molly cocked an eyebrow. ‘Too old to be sleeping on the floor in the same room as mesel and Annie and Emma, you mean? I'll not disagree with you there! Though he's usually so tired arter his work, he sleeps like a log. But Annie's got a live-in position down in Yelverton so she'll be stopping school, so at least 'twill be one less squeezed into the bed. It shoulda been me really, being the eldest girl, going into service. But I've always been needed at home, and it sort of stayed that way.'

‘And I'm so glad it did!' Rose beamed at her, patting her friend's arm. Their eyes met, Molly's a glistening emerald whilst Rose's softened to lavender, the bond between the two girls ever deepening.

They had inadvertently stopped to look at the growing walls of the building, and as if of one mind, continued on their walk. It might not do to stop too long. The two pretty young women had already attracted the silent attention of more than one prisoner, and that could cause trouble. And so they stepped out briskly, their eyes averted, as they approached the gaol itself. But, familiar as they were with its grey, stone severity, neither could help glancing at the forbidding complex and the prison farmland that stretched out behind it as far as the eye could see. Within the horseshoe-shaped outer wall, the cell blocks radiated like the spokes of a half-wheel, an ominous backdrop to the workshops, hospital and lesser buildings at the front of the compound. Over them all towered the massive Number Five Prison, the first of the original prisoner-of-war blocks to be rebuilt as a five-storey monster with regimented rows of small barred windows in its unyielding walls. Constructed by convicts with stone from the quarry, it had only opened two years previously, and yet they knew from Molly's father that damp was already seeping into some of the three hundred unheated cells, and prisoners who had been moved there from the old buildings – which had been converted internally with dry, iron cells – wished they were back in their former abode, grim as it was.

Rose shivered as they passed the main gate, for even her own comfortable home with its blazing fires could be cold in the depths of the long Dartmoor winter. She squared her slim shoulders. It had been a glorious autumn day; she should enjoy it whilst she could, and put such dark thoughts aside.

‘Amber's still behaving like a lunatic,' she began anew. ‘She's very obedient and willing to learn, but the instant anything exciting happens, like a rabbit or something, she forgets everything I've taught her and won't obey a single command!'