Rose Rivers Read online

  Mama didn’t even try to defend me. She simply shook her head and sighed, then steered the conversation to Rupert’s last letter and his progress at school. At last she was in her element, because her golden boy was doing so splendidly. Mrs Feynsham-Jones had scored several points, but Mama held the trump card.

  ‘Dear Rupert,’ said Mrs Feynsham-Jones. ‘My girls miss him dreadfully, especially Pamela. She struck up a firm friendship with Rupert in the summer – did you know?’

  ‘Dear Pamela,’ said Mama, but she sounded uncertain. She wanted me to be firm friends with the Feynsham-Jones sisters, but she wasn’t so sure they were good enough for Rupert.

  When Mrs Feynsham-Jones had left, Mama asked me if I’d known that Rupert and Pamela were ‘firm friends’.

  ‘I’m not sure you could call it that,’ I said.

  ‘Mmm, I thought as much,’ said Mama. ‘Still, I suppose Rupert could do worse. For the moment. Of course, Rupert and Pamela are still children. It’s not as if they’re seriously courting!’

  ‘Rupert certainly isn’t serious,’ I told her.

  ‘For all he’s grown into a little gentleman, he has a head full of sport and tuck and japes. He’s years away from thinking about sweethearts. The very idea!’ said Mama fondly. She glanced at me. ‘Dear goodness, they’ll be telling me you’re firm friends with some boy next!’ She laughed as if this were a great joke.

  I don’t want to be romantically involved with any boy, but I couldn’t help feeling hurt that Mama found the idea so funny. I kept thinking about Paris’s sketch. I looked so fierce and plain. Positively ugly in fact. No matter how much I brush my hair or how often I change my dress or how scrupulous I am about keeping my hands ink free and my stockings unwrinkled, I am never going to be pretty.

  I didn’t want to be an insipid pink-and-white girl like Pamela. I wished I could be an exotic, dark-haired beauty like Paris’s friend in France. I wondered what it would be like to go abroad with him. In a few years’ time, when I was old enough, perhaps it might be possible.

  I thought about it at dinner as I looked at my unappealing fatty chop and mashed potato.

  ‘Do eat up, Rose. You’ve been toying with that chop for the last ten minutes. Edie is waiting to serve us our dessert,’ said Mama.

  ‘Sorry, Mama. I’m just not very hungry,’ I said, pushing my food to the side of my plate.

  ‘Less of that nonsense! Eat it up at once. You’re thin as a rake. You’ll make yourself ill if you don’t eat properly,’ said Mama. ‘Edward, make the child eat up.’

  ‘A few more mouthfuls please, Rose,’ said Papa. ‘Though I must admit, you look the picture of health, even though your mama feels you’re wasting away. Look at those lovely pink cheeks!’

  I was blushing because, inside my head, Paris and I were dining in a little French restaurant. I wasn’t sure what French people ate. I could only conjure up frogs’ legs, which didn’t sound very palatable – but I wouldn’t care. I’d have eaten sautéed frogs, toads, newts, indeed, any kind of reptile, just so long as I could share the meal with him. We were washing it down with red wine. Rupert and I had once shared a half-full bottle of wine to see what it was like to be drunk. It had been such an unpleasant experiment that just the smell of wine made me feel ill now – but in my daydream I sipped away happily, raising my glass to Paris as he sketched me.

  I managed the mouthfuls Papa demanded, ate half my strawberry tart and custard, and then escaped. I went to see how Clover had fared on her trip to Bethnal Green, but she was busy bathing the children and Nurse told me I was in the way. Clover didn’t even look at me.

  I decided to wait till later, when everyone else was asleep. At last the children had settled down, and I could hear Nurse snoring. There was silence from Beth’s room. I hoped Nurse Budd was asleep too. I was unnerved by the thought that she might be sitting behind the door listening, but I summoned my courage and tiptoed along the corridor.

  I opened the door to the servants’ stairs cautiously to stop it creaking, and then hurried up the narrow steps. The wood was cold on my bare feet, and so worn and splintered. The family stairs were all thickly carpeted, with polished brass stair rods.

  I crept past Edie and Maggie’s room. I could hear them whispering. ‘Honestly, it makes me so flaming cross,’ Edie was muttering. I wondered what it was that made her angry. Was it us? Did they even like us? I knew so little about them, and yet they knew everything about us. Maggie emptied our night-time chamber pots and dealt with our dirty clothes, washing and ironing them and sewing on all the missing buttons. She must think us a trial.

  Edie wasn’t so involved with us children, but she knew Mama intimately. She held out her towel when she bathed, and squeezed her into her corsets, and powdered her bosom. She padded out her thinning hair and applied rouge to give her cheeks a girlish blush. She was snippy with us, but always flattered Mama:

  ‘Oh, madam, that blue suits you beautifully!’

  ‘No one would believe you’d had seven children!’

  ‘What tiny feet you have! Those pearl kid boots set them off a treat!’

  Edie can’t really think that. She is as adept at wheedling as Paris. She even makes a fuss of Alphonse, giving him little titbits – yet once, when he snapped at her, I saw her bend down and bare her own teeth, imitating his growls. She was larking around for Maggie’s benefit, but she looked truly menacing, and Alphonse ran away in fright.

  Perhaps Edie wants to bare her teeth at us too. Maybe all the servants disliked us. Cook might secretly spit into our food as she stirred our stews and puddings. Mr Hodgson might be quietly selling off the silver and vintage wine and pocketing the profits. Jack Boots and Mary-Jane might pull faces and do cruel impersonations behind our backs. Our own nurse had dandled and rocked us to sleep, but perhaps she was sick and tired of us now. And I was sure that Nurse Budd hated us, for all she sounded so sugary sweet.

  Nurse Budd! She hated Clover too. She wanted to get rid of her. It seemed so obvious now. She’d taken the sapphire brooch and put it in Clover’s bed!

  I burst into Clover’s room. I thought she’d be crying in the dark, but her candle was lit and she was sitting up in the tattered petticoat she wore as a nightgown. I saw that the pillow and all the little presents I’d given her were neatly parcelled up beside her.

  ‘Clover?’ I said, forgetting to whisper.

  ‘I should lower your voice, Miss Rose. Here are your things. Please take them away.’

  ‘Oh, Clover, don’t be like this,’ I begged. ‘I didn’t really think you’d stolen the wretched brooch. And I didn’t tell on you, did I? I lied because I wanted to protect you.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Rose,’ she said coldly.

  ‘Please don’t call me Miss Rose. I’m your friend! And listen to me, I’m sure I know how the brooch came to be in your bed. Nurse Budd put it there! She hates the way you try to protect Beth. She was trying to get you dismissed.’

  ‘Have you only just realized that? And you’re supposed to be so clever! I worked that out the moment you told me you’d found the brooch in my bed,’ said Clover. ‘You thought I’d stolen it, just like everyone else, because I’m just a slum child from Cripps Alley.’

  ‘All right, it was dreadful of me, and I feel deeply ashamed now. Please say you’ll forgive me,’ I implored her.

  ‘As if you care whether I forgive you or not! You’re the daughter of the house. I’m just the servant,’ she said.

  ‘Will you stop this! I care dreadfully!’ I sat down beside her and tried to put my arm round her, but she flinched.

  ‘Please be friends with me, Clover. I made a mistake, and now I’m sorry. For goodness’ sake, friends can sometimes behave badly to each other, can’t they? Rupert used to say terrible things to me, and I had to put up with it. I still liked him.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like you any more,’ said Clover. ‘That’s one thing you can’t make me do, even though I’m your servant. Now please take your things and go back to yo