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Rose had very nearly made it to the back door when Frances intercepted her. Blocked her path, feet from freedom, armed with a fresh towel over one arm and a pressed, starchy looking dress over the other. There was no justice in the world, there really wasn’t. Frances wasn’t even meant to be in charge of Rose; she was a nursemaid, they were paying her to look after the bastard, she was a powderer of backsides and wiper of drool and tears.
“Mornin’, Frances,” Rose said nonchalantly, trying to sidestep her like she was the last line of defense in a game of football.
“Oh, no, you don’t-“ Frances, in a surprisingly smooth maneuver, flung the dress over the towel and wrapped her free arm around Rose’s shoulders, turning her and immediately starting to steer her back towards the stairs. “We’ve to get you ready.”
“Ready for what?” Rose asked innocently, rolling her shoulder in an effort to dislodge Frances’ arm and succeeding not at all.
“You’re having your picture taken, don’t you remember?” Frances was pushing her up the steps now, with neither force nor mercy. “You and your brother.”
“That’s right...” Rose said as brightly as possible. “Thanks ever so for reminding me, Frances. I’ll just-“ she took Frances wrist and moved it away from her shoulder “-just take the grays some apples and then-“
“There’ll be plenty of time for the horses after,” Frances said just as brightly, pushed Rose through the door and into the upstairs hallway.
“Ah, Frances…” Rose groaned.
“In the bath, come on.”
“I had a bloody bath yesterday-“
“At the very least we’ll do your hair,” Frances interrupted.
“I-“
“Will I have to call up Missis Shelby?”
“She ain’t-“
“Right.”
Rose looked up and realised to her great dismay, that Frances’ mind was made up. When Frances made up her mind, she turned into a silent but lethal force. She took hold of
Rose much more firmly than before and towed her into her bedroom. Locked in wordless combat, they grappled through the motions of brushing, braiding and buttoning, until Frances was slightly flushed and Rose resembled the sort of child that might grace the front of an insufferably dull picture book; apart from the murderous scowl perhaps.
#
Grace was downstairs, putting on her gloves, watching the bastard roll a ball across the carpet in the sitting room with a face on her as if the little fucker had personally invented the wheel.
“There you are,” she said when Frances pushed Rose over the threshold. “Look at you, so pretty.”
“There isn’t a mirror.”
“You’ll just have to take my word for it then, won’t you.”
Grace was a great ne for the sweet face, world champion stuff. You really wanted to watch her, if you wanted to catch her at getting annoyed. There wasn’t a twitch of the mouth or a line between the brows, Grace’s face stayed perfectly still in that slightly sad way it had; she wasn’t in the habit of moving her fingers about either or even just standing a bit taller. The only thing – well, the only thing Rose had worked out thus far at any rate – was a strange little bit of darkness swooshing through the blue of her eyes. Like a drop of ink in the ocean. Blink and you’d miss it.
“Come on, Charlie,” Grace cooed. “Rosie’s here now, time to go.”
The bastard rose on its unsteady feet and started wobbling towards them, beaming.
“Are we doin’ it outside?” Rose asked with a frown.
Grace dipped her chin, ever so slightly, giving Rose a look that might have been quizzical; it made her feel thick.
“We’re meeting the photographer at Packington Hall,” Grace said finally. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“No.” Rose frowned deeper still. “Why’re we goin’ there?”
“Because they’ve a lovely rose garden,” Grace smiled. “It’ll look beautiful, you’ll see.”
They were moving towards the door now, painfully slowly because they were letting the bastard set the pace. He was in a tiny suit, with a collar that made his fat little neck look like the main course at a fancy Sunday dinner.
“Why?”
“Why what, Rosie?” Grace was rifling through the mail on the little table by the door, looking for the invitation card most likely.
“Why do we have to take a picture someplace else?”
“Does that seem strange to you?”
“Why do we have to take a picture at all?”
“Ah, Rosie…” Grace sighed.
“What?”
Grace turned and made for the door, Frances was there already, dutifully holding it open, looking at the bastard tottering along with such fondness, she seemed on the verge of bawling.
“What good is it?” Rose groaned, dragging her feet.
“It’ll help us remember,” Grace said quietly. “When we’re old and trying to think what you looked like, you and your brother, when you were little.”
“I’m not-“
“I know,” Grace interrupted, not with any force though. “But you’re young, will you give me that? And-“ she stepped outside and held out her hand for Charlie to help him down
the steps “- it’ll be nice for you and Charles, too.”
“Why?”
“Because it’ll remind you that we wanted to remember you. That you mattered. That you were loved.”
The crease between Rose’s eyebrows was so deep now, it hurt. The driver was pulling out of the motor stable behind them, slowly rolling a big, black number across the drive.
“It’s just a fuckin’ photograph,” she said.
Not even a bloody twinge. But there was that brief clouding of the skies and Rose felt a prickle of satisfaction underneath the growing crunch inside her guts. The bastard shuffled past, tried to hold onto Rose’s skirt to steady himself.
“Maybe so, Rose,” Grace said. “But it’ll only exist because someone else was bothered enough to have it taken.”
“Good morning, Missis Shelby,” the driver called out at the bottom of the stairs.
Grace turned -
“Good morning, Henry…”
- and as she did, Rose booted the bastard into his soft little backside so hard he didn’t hit the stairs until the third step down.
There were matching shrieks from Grace and Frances; and something of a yelp from Henry, he even made a completely useless leap towards the bottom of the step. The bastard
beat him there, no contest. He bounced off the third step, onto the fourth, rolled down the fifth and landed on the gravel.
Time froze and Rose froze within it. But then, after an endless blink of an eye, the bastard started howling. Screaming bloody murder. Henry was beside him now, crouching down, and Grace, batting Henry’s hands away and peeling the bastard off the drive, getting blood on her gloves.
“Sh-sh-sh-sh….” Grace was on her feet now, the bastard tight against her, his screeching face half-buried in her hair. “Sweet boy…sh-sh-sh…”
She sat back down, Grace, sat on the bottom step and turned the bastard until she could see his face. She cradled his head, kissed it, ran her fingers over his face. They were like something from a church window. The Holy Mother and the trueborn son of God or something. Like he’d been cut down off a cross rather than come down a couple of steps.
There was a lot of blood though. Probably more than there’d ever been on the face of Jaysis in any of the pictures, even the ones with the crown on. It was coming from the bastard’s mouth, from what Rose could tell, like he’d bitten the head of a chicken. Like he’d eaten broken glass.
He had some teeth, the bastard did, or he’d had some until just now. Maybe he’d bitten his tongue.
“It’s alright…” Grace was getting up again, awkwardly, never once putting down her noisy, bloody cargo “…just a fright, just a fright…” she was coming up the stairs, cooeing and sh-shing.
Rose couldn’t move. It seemed wise to make herself scarce, best to disappear, perhaps for a few days, better yet, weeks. Or disappear entirely. Before anyone’d ever had a chance to take a photograph. But she couldn’t.
“You wait until your father comes home…”
Rose couldn’t see Grace’s face, she didn’t need to. All the sweetness in Grace’s tone was now dripping acid; because not even Grace could continue pretending she gave two fucks about Rose, not when the crown prince was bleeding out in her arms. They swept past her, mother and child, and disappeared into the big house, the bastard’s yowls echoing off the high ceilings.
#
Time turned to custard. It became the sort of jelly with bits of cow’s tongue suspended inside. Rose wandered aimlessly, sat on first on the steps outside, then on the steps inside, then on a windowsill on the top floor, then on another. She stopped by the sitting room to check the clock on the mantle in between each step and sill, but no matter how long she forced herself to sit and wait in one spot, it was only ever ten minutes at the most that had passed in the rest of the world.
The bastard had long stopped screaming and Rose thought she could hear him giggling up in his room. He was fine.
A lorry came rumbling up the drive as lunchtime was approaching, but it was only the lads delivering the meat. As they disappeared into the back entrance, a heavy looking side of beef between them, Rose could nearly hear the lorry calling out to her. Get in! Come on! Run for it! It’d have been so easy. No one was watching. All she needed to do was slip out of the house and hop on the tray, hunker down behind a crate or something and stay put until they got back to the abattoir.
Getting away wasn’t the problem; the problem was staying away. Because if you ran off to avoid something – retribution, Rose thought it was called – you couldn’t come back, not ever; because whatever you were running from would not only still be waiting for you, it’d be worse.
Once, when the war was still in full swing, Finn had robbed a pretty substantial ham – robbed it from their own kitchen, where Pol had it hung up in a sack – and swapped it for a block of chocolate and a wooden gun that fired corks. Pol’s wrath had been biblical, Rose could remember the way it had sucked all the air out of the front room; apparently the ham, the last of its kind available in all the shops in all of Birmingham, had been paid for with a necklace that’d been handed down from Pol’s granny. Or maybe it’d been a ring, Rose wasn’t sure; but she could remember Finn jumping out of the window and legging it up the road in the face of Pol’s outrage. She also remembered thinking that this was a fair enough, Pol was going to whack him something shocking. But what Rose remembered most of all was the wooden spoon breaking as Pol brought it down across Finn’s arse when he came home hours later. Nothing had blown over. Nothing had been forgotten and no one had calmed down.
So yea. You didn’t run. Not unless you had a place to go. Forever.
And Rose didn’t. They’d all take her in, sure enough, James and Alice and Helen and Billy – kids were good that way – but there wasn’t a single grown-up in Small Heath who’d go along with it. Not because they’d be particularly concerned for Rose’s welfare; they’d sell her out to curry favour with her father. It’d work, as well. She’d be grassed up and brought back by dinner time.
And, really, if she was honest, Rose didn’t want to go, not forever. Grace and the bastard could fuck off and disappear and never return, but they wouldn’t. At least not today. So, there was nothing for Rose to do but wait.
#
Frances called her down for lunch. Rose sat, her scalp on fire with the buzzing of a thousand ants, mechanically ladling soup into her dry mouth. There was no sound coming from Grace’s side of the table, none at all. It wasn’t that Grace was a particularly noisy eater under more ordinary circumstances; but that day, somehow, by some dark enchantress magic, she managed to dispatch the entirety of her soup without so much as a clink of spoon on porcelain.
And, no, it wasn’t as if Rose and Grace were in any type of habit of exchanging polite conversation over a shared meal; but not a single lunch had passed without Grace talking at her, even if Rose’s answers rarely extended beyond “Yes”, “No” and handful of variations on “Dunno”.
If anyone had asked her five hours earlier, Rose would have sworn that nothing would make her happier than for Grace to finally shut up and leave her alone. Now though, good fuck.
She was surprised at how unnerved she was. It wasn’t even as if Grace was pretending Rose was invisible. She’d no problem looking at her when she sat down. There was no anger in Grace’s eyes, no wicked, vindictive pleasure; there was nothing harp or sharp or nasty about the way she looked at her. There was nothing. Nothing at all.
#
A couple of painfully slow hours later, when the car crunched up the drive, Rose’s chest broke into a strange flutter, somewhere between profound relief and dread. For a moment she thought she might be sick.
She didn’t know what to do. It was a weird and awkward feeling. Part of her wanted to walk down and meet him, rip it off like a scab and be done with it; but it seemed oddly improper. Rose wasn’t sure why, but she suspected there was some sort of etiquette to be observed. She couldn’t even guess at the right thing to do, she’d never waited for a hiding before.
There’d been a few times that she’d suspected a hiding might be waiting for her at home and been proofed right the moment she walked through the door. There’d been a few more times, especially back in the days of living under Polly’s all-seeing eye, when a hiding had taken her by surprise. But there’d never once been an occasion when Rose had known her father would be giving her a hiding before he knew it himself.
The strangeness of it all rooted her to the stop in the upstairs corridor.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Mary’s voice drifted up from the entrance hall.
Rose strained to hear her father’s response, suddenly desperate to know if he was already in a mood, whether Grace had phoned him at the office to report the day’s misdeeds.
“Who’s in?”
“Missis Shelby is in the downstairs study,” Mary said. “The children are upstairs.”
If it struck her father as strange that Rose was indoors on what really was a glorious spring day, he didn’t feel the need to mention it.
“Full house, eh?” he said drily and then there was nothing more. Only the solid clap of step as he marched off towards the office.
For lack of better ideas, Rose sat down on the top step of the grand staircase. She listened to the click of Grace’s heels, a soft knock on the office door and the almost inaudible click of the same door being pulled shut and sealing Rose’s fate.
Rose puffed out her cheeks and blew the air out very, very slowly. He was going to fucking murder her.
It took a good five minutes before Rose heard the door of the downstairs office open and her father’s footsteps were advancing.
“Rose?” he called, even before he was in the entrance hall proper.
“Yea?” Rose croaked from her perch on the top step once he’d arrived at the bottom of the stairs.
He stood for a moment, looking up at her, his head to the side a tiny bit; then beckoned her down with a curl of a finger. Rose could feel his eyes following her as she tiptoed down the stairs, eyes on her feet for feet of missing a step.
“Look at me.”
The flutter in Rose’s chest turned into a throng of thrumming bees, but she managed to drag her eyes up until they met his.
“Did you kick your brother down the stairs?”
“Yea,” Rose said weakly.
She counted three heart beats, three thundering heart beats, while her father looked at her.
“Did you mean to?”
Rose had never wanted to tell a lie as badly as now, not ever; yet she knew perfectly well that there wasn’t a way in the world he wouldn’t know if she did. He knew she’d done it. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind, he was merely waiting to see if she’d own up to it or not. Giving her a chance to save herself at least a little.
“Yea.”
“D’you have anything to say for yourself?”
Rose looked up in surprise and opened her mouth, but the words got all jammed. There was no explaining it; it was no good even to try. He’d never understand about Grace giving out to Rose’s long-gone mother for not being bothered to have Rose’s picture taken. And even if he did, it still would have been no fault of Charlie’s; so it wouldn’t change a thing, even if she did explain.
“No.”
Her father nodded slowly, exhaled slowly, cleared his throat a bit.
“Right,” he said finally. “Come on.”
He turned heel and started back towards the office, Rose following in his wake, dragging her feet as much as she was trying to keep up. She’d expected him to whack her on the spot and the thought that this was apparently to big a transgression to be dealt with at the bottom of the stairs, turned her guts to water. Rose was genuinely surprised she made in across the office threshold without her legs giving way.
“Close the door.”
No door had ever been closed more carefully; letting go of the handle felt like pulling out of the dock, leaving your home and heading for unchartered territory. By the time she managed to turn, her father’s jacket was off and there was a doubled over belt dangling from his hand.
Rose could feel her jaw tighten and her teeth groan.
He was looking at her, her father, with the slightest crease between his eyebrows, like he was thinking, like he was trying to work out how to best go about this. The strap had been the ultimate threat for years - Don’t think I won’t stripe your legs for you, chavi – but he’d only ever used his hand before. She watched him appraise the small lounge by the wall, the upholstered armchair on the driver’s side of the desk.
Rose waited, her lower lip between her teeth; waited until her toes were ready to rip through her socks from curling, until her father suddenly gripped the backrest of the chair on the visiting side of the desk and pulled it out. He spun in round until it faced the room, looked back to Rose and, for a second only, she thought he was about to ask her opinion on whether this would do.
He sat down and ordered her to approach with a curt nod. Her feet were like anvils.
“Come on,” her father said. “Let’s get it done.”
He pulled her between his legs as soon as she was close enough for him to reach, bent her over, trapped her legs under one of his and whacked her. She heard the swoosh and crack of the belt before she felt the bite across her arse, but when she did, there was no way she could stop herself from yowling and trying to wriggle away.
“Your brother could have broken his neck.” Her father tightened his hold on her and gave her another, right over the first. Rose yelled and tried to kick her legs, but it was no good. She got a third, reached back to shield herself, got a smack on the hand and then a cracking whack across the top of her legs.
“You’ll not do that again.”
“No-“ Rose’s growl turned into a yelp as he whacked her again “- I won’t!”
“This is a first and a last,” her father said, the strap cracking down twice for emphasis. “D’you understand me?”
“Yea,” Rose managed, voice cracking. “I do, honest, I do.”
She felt him raise his arm again and screwed her eyes shut; but the next whack didn’t come.
“Orright, up you get.”
Sore and bewildered, Rose scrambled off her father’s knee and stood, shakily, both hands rubbing frantically at her stinging backside. She glanced up and found him looking at her, frowning, his whacking arm slung over the backrest of the chair at an angle that was as casual as it was awkward.
“Upstairs, you.” Her father nodded towards the door. “Off you go.”
Rose managed to walk from the room at a fairly dignified pace; though truth be told her aching arse was slowing her down as much as what little remained of her pride.
#
“Is that where you’ve got to.”
Rose nearly jumped out of her skin. She’d slipped from her room and out into the stable a little before dinner time. Dark was falling and the stables were deserted, save the
softly huffing beasts scrounged what feed they’d dropped on the ground; she hadn’t heard her father coming.
“Missed dinner,” he said quietly, shaking a cigarette from the packet.
“Not hungry,” Rose muttered, digging another filthy cube of sugar from her skirt pocket and feeding it to the small brown. He wasn’t going to whack her again, she didn’t think he would. Not for missing dinner.
“Yea, well, you’ll know about it in the morning, eh?” her father said, sounding so much like Pol that Rose’s heart gave a little lurch on longing. She’d say it all the time, Polly, to both Rose and Finn, whenever they claimed lack of appetite - usually only on evenings when Pol had secured some type of entrails to cook up.
“Orright, Rosie?”
She looked up at frowned at him, scowled even. Her entire forehead was in knots, it felt like. She shrugged.
“Come here.”
Rose took a step and stopped dead. Her father had slipped out of his jacket and was rolling up his sleeves. He glanced up at her through the smoke.
“Come on.”
Rose took a step back and planted her feet.
“I didn’t do any-“ she stopped herself when he cocked his head. “I mean, I did kick the ba-…by, but I didn’t do nothin’ else and you’ve already-“
“You’re no gettin’ more,” Tommy said evenly. “It’s done. Now, come here.”
Rose couldn’t have approached him more cautiously, had he been a sleeping bear. Her father turned around and went down on his haunches. He reached a hand over his shoulder.
“Give me your hand,” he said.
She reached out tentatively and he took her hand in his, guiding her fingers across his shoulder blade.
“There-“ he pressed down on Rose’s hand a little. “Feel it?”
“I do, yea.”
There was something raised beneath her fingertips, smooth and a bit soft. Rose ran her hand along it slowly, it felt like someone had drawn a near perfect square, no bigger than Rose’s palm, on her father’s back with thick, snailish paint.
“Your uncle John pushed me off the shed roof,” Tommy said. “He was only five or six, but he was fuckin’ furious.”
“At you?” Rose asked.
“Yea.”
“Why?”
“Don’t remember.” Tommy shrugged and the little square moved under Rose’s fingers. “Might have been trying to get him home and he didn’t want to come. It was late, after dark. The old man had a fire and a couple of mates on the go. Anyway, John pushed me off and I went flying and nearly landed in the fire. The old man was fumin’.”
“What’d he do?”
“He dragged your uncle John off the roof, gave him a thick ear and a kick up the arse for having a go at me.”
“Is that how you got that?” Rose asked, stroking across the square. “Is it a burn from the fire?”
Tommy shook his head. Rose noticed only now the shiny, far away look in his eyes.
“The old man chased John off-” her father cleared his throat a little “- and then he gave me a hiding for letting my younger brother beat me in a fight. Didn’t stop til the buckle got stuck.”
The shape suddenly made sense and Rose’s fingers stilled.
After a moment Tommy got to his feet and started digging through his discarded jacket for his cigarettes.
“Did it bleed?” Rose asked, awed and appalled at once at the sheer cruelty of it all.
“Like a stuck pig.”
Her father lit up and leaned back against the wall and in the glow of the cigarette Rose just caught the wave of sadness crashing over his face. She breached the endless step between them and leaned against the wall next to him.
“I’m not bleeding,” she whispered.
For a moment, her father seemed to turn to stone. Become one with the wood of the wall. Then, though, he reached over and rested his hand on her head. The stood like that until it was too dark to see the little brown in the box across; Rose and her father and his scratching nails against her scalp.