Rose Rivers Read online

  ‘Yes, but not this girl – a friend of Miss Pamela and Lucinda-May and Cecily,’ he insisted. ‘What’s Mrs Feynsham-Jones going to say, eh?’

  Mrs Feynsham-Jones said quite a lot. She sent the stable boy running for her doctor and had me carried up to Pamela’s room and laid on her bed.

  ‘You poor dear soul, try to bear up,’ she said, holding my hand.

  ‘Will I send for her mother, madam?’ asked a maid.

  ‘I think the doctor had better examine her first. We will have to tell poor Rose’s mama very sensitively. She’s rather an invalid and suffers from nerves,’ said Mrs Feynsham-Jones.

  I felt very apprehensive about the doctor’s visit. I remembered the time Algie played at being a tightrope walker along the top of a wall and over-estimated his balancing skills. He dislocated his shoulder and screamed blue murder when the doctor put it back into place. I didn’t want my leg to be manipulated in such a brutal way. The cramp had faded anyway.

  I knew I should tell Mrs Feynsham-Jones that I was perfectly all right, just a little bumped and bruised. However, the doctor arrived surprisingly quickly, before I could manufacture a miraculous recovery. I told him that I was feeling much better now, but he prodded and pressed me all over anyway. Thank goodness he didn’t decide anything needed to be manipulated.

  ‘Keep her lying down for half an hour, and tell her nurse to keep an eye on her during the night to make sure there’s no relapse. But she should be as right as rain,’ he told Mrs Feynsham-Jones. Then he nodded at me. ‘Don’t worry, my dear, I’m sure they’ll make a horsewoman of you yet.’

  I was determined never to go near a horse again. I realized I hadn’t even studied the construction of Marker’s legs. I had just looked at them warily in case they started kicking out at me.

  ‘Stay here quietly, Rose,’ said Mrs Feynsham-Jones. ‘The girls will be back from their ride before long.’

  I soon got bored. I sat up gingerly, and then eased myself off the bed. I could walk perfectly well, thank goodness. I didn’t even have a limp. I gave a great sigh of relief and wandered around Pamela’s room, peering at her belongings. She seemed to care for reading more than vacant Lucinda-May: she actually had a bookcase, though she didn’t have many proper books, just a pristine leather-bound set of Mr Dickens’s novels. It didn’t look as if she’d read any of them. I wondered if she would let me borrow one or two. After all, she’d let me borrow her riding skirt, and seemed surprisingly fond of me all of a sudden.

  I bent down to examine the bottom shelf. It was mostly dreary fashion journals, but she also had some big bound volumes of the Girl’s Own Paper. They have proper stories in them, and I like reading the advice columns because the girls have such trivial problems and the adviser is so sharp with them.

  I picked out last year’s volume, and perched carefully on the end of Pamela’s bed with it. I usually sat cross-legged, but my right leg was still throbbing. I started flicking through the pages for the first column of tart answers.

  IRISH GIRL: We cannot decipher your letter because your handwriting is appalling.

  KEEN TO PROSPER: It is unattractive for a young girl to seek to earn a great deal of money.

  DESIREE: If you want to know how to make an Apple Charlotte, you should obtain a recipe in the cheapest cookery book published.

  LOVELORN: We do not approve of hankering after such an unsuitable gentleman. You cannot be a well-brought-up girl. Do try to curb your romantic nature.

  There were dried flowers inserted between several of the pages. Pamela definitely had a romantic nature. Then a letter slithered from between the pages. I stared at the dashing black copperplate. I knew that handwriting! I turned the letter over to see the signature, hoping I was somehow mistaken … But no, there it was, plain for all to see, with the distinctive flourish of the t at the end. Rupert.

  I READ THE letter and returned it to the annual, which I thrust onto the bookshelf. I lay back on the bed, wrapping my arms around me, rocking to and fro to distract myself. Beth rocks in exactly the same way. I never understood why before.

  I can’t remember the letter word for word, but the beginning and end are seared on my heart.

  My dear Pamela. And then: Your loving friend, Rupert.

  LOVING, LOVING, LOVING, LOVING, LOVING.

  It wasn’t exactly a love letter. Rupert didn’t wax lyrical about the arch of her eyebrow, the long line of her neck, the curl of her blonde hair. Rupert wrote about himself, not Pamela. There was a long paragraph about the other boys in his form. He dismissed most as swots or saps, but said there were two capital fellows called Hardy and Martin, and the three of them got up to all sorts of japes.

  He mentioned one of the prefects, Mackinley, who seemed a lordly sort of fellow. It was apparently Rupert’s job to cook sausages for his breakfast. There was a great deal about food – the beefsteak pudding at lunch and then herrings for Mackinley’s tea, though Rupert and the capital fellows had to make do with bread and jam.

  There were complaints about the hardness of his school bed and the thinness of his blankets, and a passage about his charwoman and her adenoids. It was supposed to be comical, but it sounded unpleasantly mocking.

  The last sentence was the worst:

  School is all right, I suppose, but this first half seems endless because I’m missing you.

  I cannot bear it. Rupert isn’t missing me at all. He hasn’t even bothered to write to me. He’s written to Pamela instead. He’s missing her, though he hardly knows her.

  There was a great fuss when I got home. Mama insisted I spend the night in the green guest room so that Nurse Budd could keep an eye on me. I hated this idea, but at least I would get to see how she treated Beth. There was an argument about whether Beth could take Marigold to bed with her.

  ‘It would be such a shame to spoil her hair and her lovely silk frock,’ said Nurse Budd.

  ‘Papa said that Beth should be allowed to take her to bed,’ I said.

  Nurse Budd sighed. ‘Well, Miss Rose, we must do as your papa says – though I think he’ll regret it when this lovely doll is ruined,’ she said.

  ‘Ruined?’ said Beth anxiously.

  ‘Now now, Miss Beth, no need to get worked up,’ said Nurse Budd. ‘I think it’s dosing time, my dear.’

  She went over to the washstand and unlocked a small leather case with black bottles neatly stacked inside. ‘Open wide for your nice medicine, Miss Beth.’

  ‘Nice medicine,’ said Beth, her mouth gaping like a baby bird’s.

  I was astonished. Whenever Nurse tried to dose Beth with castor oil she screamed blue murder and spat it straight out. Now Beth swallowed this dark sticky potion eagerly and even licked the spoon.

  ‘What is that medicine?’ I asked. ‘And why are you giving it to her? She isn’t ill.’

  ‘It’s only Godfrey’s Cordial, Miss Rose. Lovely and soothing – and look at the label: it’s so safe it’s recommended for little babies,’ said Nurse Budd, showing me. She even pulled out the cork so that I could have a sniff. It smelled strongly of treacle.

  ‘I should keep it well away from Algie if I were you,’ I said.

  I settled down to sleep. I dreaded Nurse Budd peering at me during the night, but she was soon snoring steadily. So was Beth. I stayed wide awake, thinking about Rupert and Pamela. I needed soothing too. I felt like taking a swig of Godfrey’s Cordial myself.

  Your loving friend.

  The phrase seemed to be scrawled on the insides of my eyelids so that I could see it awake or asleep.

  Why did Rupert think so much of Pamela? She was more than a year older than him and deadly dull. When we were forced to take tea with the Feynsham-Joneses, Rupert had talked to her, but kept rolling his eyes at me to show how bored he was.

  He couldn’t be bothered to write to me, his twin sister, his closest companion, his best friend since birth, but he wrote to Pamela. Had they been secretly meeting during the summer? When he came home for his first half holiday, would he