Ring O' Roses Read online

  Ring O’ Roses

  Lucilla Andrews

  Copyright © The Estate of Lucilla Andrews 2019

  This edition first published 2019 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1972

  www.lucillaandrews.com

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover artwork images © Irina Bg / QQ7 (Shutterstock)

  izusek (istockphoto.com)

  Cover artwork design © Wyndham Media Ltd

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  Also by Lucilla Andrews

  from Wyndham Books

  The Print Petticoat

  The Secret Armour

  The Quiet Wards

  The First Year

  A Hospital Summer

  My Friend the Professor

  Nurse Errant

  Flowers from the Doctor

  The Young Doctors Downstairs

  The New Sister Theatre

  The Light in the Ward

  A House for Sister Mary

  Hospital Circles

  Highland Interlude

  The Healing Time

  Edinburgh Excursion

  One Night in London (The Jason Trilogy Book 1)

  A Weekend in the Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2)

  In an Edinburgh Drawing Room (The Jason Trilogy Book 3)

  Wyndham Books is reissuing

  all of Lucilla Andrews’s novels.

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  Go to www.lucillaandrews.com

  For

  Alison and Hector

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

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  Chapter One

  The Cross of St George was flying from the square tower of the old grey church that afternoon. The lilac bushes by the church were purple, white and blue-mauve; and in the banks of the lane running up from the village, there were bluebells, buttercups and early cow parsley. I had remembered the wild flowers, but forgotten the grass was so green.

  ‘Young Ruth can’t grumble for her wedding.’ Bert Mercer pushed up the peak of the tweed cap he had worn during the seven years Ruth and I travelled in his school taxi. ‘Bridesmaid, aren’t you? You’ll be on time. The ringers are still down the Lamb.’ He turned into the vicarage drive. ‘Been on your holidays, have you?’

  ‘I’m just finishing one. Back to work on Monday.’

  His blue eyes considered me calmly as he braked. ‘London?’ I nodded. ‘Didn’t fancy Canada same as your mum and brother, then?’

  I avoided looking at the house next door. The two houses stood alone on the hilltop and opposite the church. ‘I enjoyed working there this last year. A beautiful country.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ He glanced at that other house. ‘Could’ve done with your dad last winter. Me chest was playing up again. This new young chap gives me these tablets and says to stay off the spirits. Won’t mix, he says. Tablets!’ He snorted. ‘That’s all these young doctors know, seemly. Your dad wouldn’t have given me no tablets. He’d have fetched me down a bottle of his linctus, told the wife to tuck me off with a hot toddy, I’d have sweated it out and been back on the school run in the week! Three weeks I had on the club with them tablets! How was I to know as he meant to stay off the beer? Didn’t say, did he? Missed your dad, I can tell you! You didn’t catch him telling a working man to stay off his beer.’ He heaved himself out and lunged into the back for my bags. ‘When did you get back from Canada, then?’

  I smiled. ‘Just over two hours ago. I was due yesterday but our flight was delayed by a snowstorm in Montreal.’

  Bert Mercer and his ancestors came from the village at the foot of that hill. The village had seen the Romans arrive and leave; the Jutes burn it down; the Normans take it over; the Battle of Britain overhead and a fair selection of World War II bombs fall on and around it. The village could show emotion, when very drunk. ‘Snow, eh?’ Bert shoved up his cap another inch. ‘Wouldn’t fancy it this time of the year meself, neither.’

  ‘Cathy, dear! Welcome back!’ Mrs Desmond exploded through her front door, kissed me warmly and re-skewered her hat. ‘Bert, will you kindly leave those bags just inside the door and go back to the next train ‒ splendid!’ She ushered me into the transformed vicarage hall, round caterers and trestle tables, to the foot of the main stairs. ‘You’ll find everything waiting in the guest-room ‒ next to the guest-room ‒ next to the old school-room ‒ remember? You won’t mind if I leave you, dear? Ruth’s having a little trouble with her veil ‒ she’s a bit edgy ‒ bride’s prerogative, as I’ve told her! But she was quite relieved when you rang from the airport as she did find yesterday a little trying. Of course, the best man’s slipping a disc was rather unfortunate ‒’

  ‘Nigel Jarvis?’ I exclaimed. ‘Ruth didn’t tell me on the ‒’

  ‘As I’ve said, dear ‒ we are a bit edgy! The poor boy came off his tractor, but as he’s not badly hurt and the tractor skidded on alone into a half-empty dyke and was quite undamaged, really we can only be thankful. Tractors are so precious at this season! Not too travel-worn? Good! Off you go! The Vicar and Danny have already gone across to the church and we mustn’t be too long.’ She waved me up the stairs as if it were five minutes, not over three years, since I had last been in her house. Nor, despite a new cream straw sombrero and navy silk outfit, did she look in any way altered. She had always been a large handsome woman with a weakness for huge hats and the engrained air of being about to declare the bazaar open.

  I was very fond of Mrs Desmond. She was so genuinely kind and had a lack of imagination I had found restful as a child. Being incapable of visualizing the worst, Mrs Desmond had waited until one fell out of a tree before putting it out of bounds. My mother had only to see a child glance at a tree to see a broken back. In Mrs Desmond’s place now, my mother would be convinced the dress made to measurements exchanged across the Atlantic would never fit me; she would take the best man’s accident as a bad omen that must inevitably heral
d the bridegroom’s breaking his neck before he reached the church, or the Vicar’s suffering a stroke from the emotional strain of marrying his favourite child to a man taking her to Australia for two years directly after the honeymoon.

  My brother had mother’s temperament. ‘How can you stand going back? It’ll be agony!’ both had assured me constantly for the last month. Being even less sure now than then that I could stand it, once the anaesthetizing effect of my post-flying hangover wore off, I was very grateful to have been sent up to get changed alone before even seeing Ruth. The mental breathing space was such perfect therapy that for the first time in my life I wondered if Mrs Desmond was as unimaginative as we had all assumed, or if thirty years of marriage to a theological scholar with a dry sense of humour and very High Church leanings in a country living where, irrespective of social backgrounds, all three qualities were regarded with deep suspicion, was responsible for her reputation for seeing only the silver linings. She was a very popular as well as very good Vicar’s wife.

  The long powder-blue velvet dress, matching shoes and gloves fitted exactly. The hair ribbon was the right length. I studied the result in the long mirror and tried unsuccessfully to accept the pallid blonde zombie staring back as myself. Her ability to stand still was no help as I was now back to feeling the sway of the ’plane. It was like being suspended on the end of a piece of string held by eternity with a childish streak. Just as one grew accustomed to the sway, eternity twitched it up or dropped it down.

  A knock on the door startled me disproportionally. I opened it carefully as a drunk and blinked at the man in a morning suit holding a posy of cornflowers and pink roses. ‘You look different, Joss,’ I said.

  He was Ruth’s elder brother and was smiling rather nicely. ‘So do you, Cathy. Very charming but not yet with us. Why don’t you sit down?’

  I backed and sat on the bed. ‘It isn’t lack of food. They fed us all night.’

  ‘Just time-lag.’ He gave me the posy, explained he had taken over as best man and driven up with it as it had been accidentally delivered to the bridegroom’s home. ‘The ringers were staggering out of the Lamb as I came by. I must get back before they start or poor Tom’ll blow another gasket.’

  ‘Poor Tom. Poor Nigel. Your mother says he’s not too bad.’

  ‘Just cursing his guts out at doing this at this time of year.’ He asked after my mother, brother and sister-in-law but tactfully omitted my step-father.

  I said, ‘He’s a very nice man, Joss. I didn’t expect to like him, but I do, very much.’

  ‘I’m glad on all counts,’ he said, as if he meant it.

  Ruth and I were the same age, twenty-four. Joss was five years older, Danny a year younger. As kids the five-year gap had been enough to cause Ruth and me irritation, without being sufficient to make us respect his being able to tie his own shoelaces, or buy himself a beer at the Lamb while we had to sit outside eating crisps and ducking behind parked cars when any member of the P.C.C. or Mothers’ Union went by. All our childhood, Joss and I had accepted each other partly as we had no alternative and partly as we had managed to achieve a kind of undemanding but solid understanding that was firmly based on shared roots and mutual indifference.

  The young Desmonds all had their father’s dark hair and eyes, but only Joss their mother’s heavier features and build. As a boy he had been all jaw, nose and triangular eyebrows, with bones that looked too big for him. We had last met at my father’s funeral, but I could not now remember what he had then looked like. I had a dim recollection of his saying that if I ever wanted to look round another hospital, to give him a ring, he would show me round Benedict’s and buy me a meal. I had not taken that up and nor had he done more about it. During the remaining years of my general training in St Martha’s, London, I had seen Ruth regularly but neither of her brothers. I noticed absently Joss’s bones no longer seemed too big and that my face seemed to be puzzling him. I asked what was wrong with it. ‘Do I need more lipstick? Or have I forgotten to make up both eyes?’

  ‘Turn to the light.’ He came nearer, and being considerably taller than myself and standing, bent for a closer look. ‘You’ll do, as you are.’ He stepped back rather quickly. ‘See you.’ He went out and closed the door.

  I got up quickly and looked at myself in the mirror. I was still wondering if I had imagined the expression I had seen flickering through Joss’s eyes just now, when I chanced to look out of the window and forgot everything else. The window overlooked the back garden next door. The new owners had replaced my father’s cherished rose beds with turf. I had just enough time to re-do my eyes before the bells started and Mrs Desmond called me to Ruth’s room.

  Ruth’s Victorian-styled dress was of broderie anglaise and her long dark hair was piled up under a short lace veil. She was a very pretty, slim girl and she looked dreamy. We walked round each other in silence then began to laugh, wildly. Mrs Desmond beamed on us. ‘There’s nothing like a good laugh to settle the nerves,’ she said.

  Tom Everett, Ruth’s bridegroom, had been in the fifth at our co-ed grammar when Ruth and I were first-formers. His father was owner-editor of the local paper and around that time had bought a house in the village. As Tom had fed us with some of the pastry from the meat pies he bought to eat on the journey home, with unusual charity we had named him Acne-Chops. One morning in his ‘A’ Level year he had appeared in Bert’s taxi with a pipe. After we told him we thought a pipe did something for an older man, he had sucked it constantly in the taxi until he left school. He never lit it.

  Ruth spluttered, ‘He still doesn’t smoke.’

  ‘So wise,’ said Mrs Desmond. ‘I wish Danny would give it up.’

  The pealing bells cascaded over the hill, the village below and the flat green farmland beyond when Mrs Desmond and I crossed the lane a few minutes later. The little group of women waiting by the lych-gate stepped aside. ‘It’s the old Doctor’s girl! You remember poor Dr Maitland ‒ took bad just after evening surgery ‒ gone he was, gone ‒ before his poor wife could get a hand to the ’phone for the ambulance ‒ cruel shock ‒ and how are you then, dear? And your mum? So young Paul’s got hisself a wife, eh? There! Your turn next, dear! Lovely day you got for your Ruth, eh, Mrs Desmond?’

  The bells faded away but the birds went on singing. The sunshine filtering through the stained-glass windows sent shafts of red, blue and yellow onto white-washed walls that had been five hundred years old when Tudor England was middle-aged. Suddenly the faces swung round, some familiar, some strange, some appraising, some envying, some smiling. I only properly noticed Tom Everett’s face. He looked quite incredibly happy.

  This time: ‘Dearly beloved we are gathered together …’

  Last time: ‘Man that is born of woman …’ Was that the last time? Hadn’t I been here in the months before our house sold? If I had, I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t even remember the two family weddings I had attended in this last year.

  ‘We’re on the move, Cathy,’ murmured Joss.

  In the vestry he drew my hand through his arm as we formed up behind the parents and asked very quietly if I thought the final hymn had been a strictly tactful choice.

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Now thank we all our God.’ His eyes smiled into mine. ‘Take it easy. You sang the official version, not the bawdy variation you wrote after “O” Levels.’

  ‘I’d forgotten that.’ I smiled back as we followed the little procession down the aisle.

  A battery of professional and amateur photographers was waiting outside the church. We were grouped and regrouped. ‘Bride and her mother alone, please … bride and bridesmaid … cheese, ladies, cheese, please … bride and groom again …’

  The front gate of our old house looked naked without the brass plate. The flowering currant bushes in the front garden had been replaced by ailing rhododendrons. They wouldn’t do well in that soil. Too much lime. ‘Nothing’ll do well in the wrong soil,’ my father said.

  Canada ha
d been wrong for me. I had not been able to say that to my family as it would have hurt them too much. With the enthusiasm of converts and the self-exiled’s need for justification, they saw in black and white. Canada was their Promised Land, England all strikes, scruffy students, drugs. ‘Why go back?’

  Simply, I had missed England. When my training ended, I had taken a year’s job in a Canadian hospital to see if my mother was as content as she seemed from her letters. She was more than that, she was happy. After her re-marriage three months ago I wrote to the Chief Nursing Officer at Martha’s. She had answered by return, offering me the job of Senior Staff Nurse in Luke Ward. ‘After so much departmental surgery,’ she wrote, ‘I think you will enjoy a return to medical nursing.’

  Tomorrow I was due back at my old digs in London. Yesterday I had been sorry my weekend with the Desmonds would be cut short. I liked them all, but I wasn’t sorry now my flying hangover was wearing much thinner. It was too early yet to tell whether or not coming back was a mistake, but not that parts of it hurt like hell.

  Particularly the reception. At first.

  ‘Cathy, I want all your news! My dear, it seems so strange not having the Maitlands on this hill. I expect you’re quite sad to see the old house again?’

  ‘Drink up, girl,’ said Joss. ‘I’m tired of toting this full bottle.’

  ‘So your dear mother has re-married, Cathy? I always thought she was so devoted ‒ but they say he’s a wealthy man? Not that he can take your father’s place in your heart ‒ I know just how you feel, dear ‒’

  ‘Cathy, you can’t imagine how we miss your father! He was such a good doctor ‒ he’d come out in any weather at any hour ‒ I expect you miss him still?’

  ‘Let’s have your glass, Cathy,’ said Joss.

  ‘Cathy, I can’t wait to hear all your news! But, darling ‒ have you heard about our railway? They’re trying to take it away, so we’ve formed an Action Group …’

  Suddenly, it was over. Slowly, the cars disgorged from the Glebe Field; the caterers began stacking glasses, folding cloths; the parents and elder relatives retreated to the Vicar’s study before their dinner with the Everett seniors; Danny started organizing our party. Danny was now taller and thinner than Joss, with his better-looking face hidden by a thick black beard.