Unwanted Wedding

‘I haven’t given you my answer yet.’

Rosy looked up at him.

‘You’re talking about taking a potentially very dangerous course,’ he continued warningly, as Rosy remained silent. ‘Edward is bound to be suspicious.’

‘But he can’t do anything. Not so long as I’ve fulfilled the terms of my grandfather’s will.’

‘Mmm… Edward is a very tricky character. It wouldn’t be wise to underestimate him. There’s an element of fraud in this whole plan of yours.’

‘Fraud?’ Rosy interrupted him anxiously. ‘But…’

‘I’ll be back from Brussels the day after tomorrow. I’ll give you my answer then. And, Rosy,’ he told her as he turned to leave, ‘in the meantime, no ads in the personal columns, hmm?’

It wasn’t fair, Rosy reflected indignantly when he had gone. Why did he always have to make her feel like a child? And a particularly stupid child at that.

‘You’ve forgotten to put sugar in my coffee again,’ Ralph reproved Rosy. He frowned slightly, his sandy eyebrows lifting almost into his hairline as he added, ‘In fact you’ve seemed very preoccupied altogether these last couple of days. Is something wrong?’

‘No…no, nothing,’ Rosy denied untruthfully.

‘Mm. You know, Rosy, it’s a pity you didn’t work a bit harder at persuading your grandfather to leave Queen’s Meadow to us. Hallows, the engineering place, is closing down next month and that’s bound to put more pressure on us. God knows how many more it’s going to make homeless. We haven’t got anything like enough beds here as it is. When I think of that damned big house and all those rooms…’

‘Yes, yes I know,’ Rosy agreed guiltily. She hadn’t discussed with Ralph the terms of her grandfather’s will and, since Edward had already made it plain that he expected to inherit the house, Rosy had simply allowed Ralph to believe that as well.

When she had first announced that she was going to do voluntary work at the shelter, she knew her father had been a little concerned but, needless to say, it had been Guard who had taken it upon himself to warn her that, in view of her family connections and her comparative wealth, Ralph might put pressure on her to help fund the shelter.

‘Ralph would never do anything like that,’ she had protested then, indignantly. And she had believed it… Had believed it… Still believed it, and if Ralph was cross with her because he felt she ought to have persuaded her grandfather to leave Queen’s Meadow to their charity, well, she could understand why.

She could never walk into the old, run-down shabby building on the outskirts of the town without a small pang.

They all did their best to make it as homely as possible, but the rooms still had that air about them that reminded her of the boarding-school she had attended when she and her father had first returned to England from his army posting in Germany. She hadn’t stayed there long, but it had left a lasting impression on her.

The first spring she had worked at the shelter she had arrived one morning with the boot of her small car filled with vases she had ‘borrowed’ from home and the back seat covered in a mass of daffodils.

Ralph had found her just as she was placing the last vase in position.

She winced even now when she remembered how angry he had been.

‘You waste money on flowers when we barely have enough to buy them food,’ he had shouted at her.

She had never made the same mistake again, but sometimes the sheer austerity of the shelter weighed her down, her own feelings adding to the compassion and anguish she already felt at the plight of the young people they took in.

Today, though, she was guiltily aware that her mind was more on her own problems than those of the homeless. Guard was due back this afternoon. What would his decision be? What did she want his decision to be?

She knew quite well what Ralph would say were she to ask him for his advice, and the modern, aware part of her agreed with him: there were far more important things to worry about than a house; there were people, her fellow human beings, in far more need than a building and yet, when she walked round the house, something she had found herself doing increasingly frequently recently, she was also emotionally aware of the love, the care, the human effort that had gone into making it what it was. It wasn’t the material value of the Grinling Gibbons carving on the staircase that smote her with guilt at the thought of its destruction, it was her knowledge of the work, the craftsmanship which had gone into its carving. If she closed her eyes she could almost instantly be there, smell the fresh, pungent odour of the new wood, feel the concentrated silence of the busy apprentices as they watched their master, see the delight and pride in their faces when they were finally allowed to make their contribution, when their work was finally inspected and passed, the experienced hands of the master running critically over their carving while they held their breath and waited for his verdict.

The plasterwork on the ceilings, the furniture in the rooms—all of it had been created with human endeavour, with human pride.

Ralph would no doubt see another side of it, of apprentices injured and maimed, thrown out of work to starve, of workmen paid a pittance by their rich patrons.

‘What’s up, boyfriend giving you a hard time?’

Rosy turned her head to force a smile in the direction of the thin, pimply boy watching her, ignoring his companion’s snigger and clearly audible, ‘I’ll bet if he was she wouldn’t be looking so miserable,’ without even a hint of the betraying colour that Guard could conjure so easily with a comment only a tenth as sexual.

‘Have you heard anything about that job you went for yet, Alan?’ she asked, ignoring both comments.

‘Nah… Don’t ‘spose I’ll hear owt, either.’

‘You could try getting some qualifications,’ Rosy suggested, ‘going to night school.’

She already knew what the answer would be and wasn’t surprised when the boy shook his head in denial of her comment. When a system had failed you as badly as it had failed these youngsters, it must be hard to have any faith in it, Rosy acknowledged as she watched the two of them swagger off in the direction of the television lounge.

An hour later, as she drove home, her stomach was already cramping at the thought of hearing Guard’s decision. To her surprise, as she pulled up at the rear of the house in what had originally been the stable yard, she saw that an unfamiliar car was already parked there.

As she got out of her own car she eyed the bright red Rolls-Royce uncertainly. She went into the house through the back entrance, through a maze of passages, past a cluster of small, dark rooms.

She could hear voices in the front hall and she tensed as she recognised one of them. Edward, her father’s cousin. What was he doing here and, more important, how had he got in?

Taking a deep breath, she pushed open the door into the hall.

Edward was standing with his back to her, his bald head shining in the light from the overhead chandelier which he had switched on.

Both he and the man with him were looking up at it.

‘Mmm…I suppose it could fetch a tidy bit, although there’s not so much call for that sort of thing now. Too big and too expensive. We’d probably be better shipping it abroad, finding an agent—’ He broke off as he turned round and saw Rosy, and touched Edward’s arm, drawing his attention to her.

‘Ah, Rosy…’

Edward’s genial manner didn’t deceive Rosy. It never had. She shared her grandfather’s and her father’s dislike and distrust of him.

‘What are you doing here, Edward?’ Rosy demanded, ignoring his pseudo-friendly overtures.

The man with him had moved slightly out of earshot and Edward’s expression changed as he glanced over to where his companion was studying the carved staircase, his eyes hardening as he recognised Rosy’s hostility.

‘Just checking out my inheritance,’ he told Rosy smoothly.

‘It isn’t yours yet,’ Rosy reminded him fiercely.

Edward gave a dismissive shrug. Unlike her father and her grandfather, Edward had run to fat in middle-age and the angry flush now mantling his face emphasised his heavy jowliness.

Her father had once remarked that Edward had a very nasty temper. On the few occasions when Rosy had met him, the tension that emanated from Edward’s wife seemed to confirm her father’s comment, but this was the first time she had witnessed any evidence of Edward’s temper at first hand.

‘Not yet, maybe, but it soon will be,’ he told her angrily. ‘And there’s not a damn thing you or anyone else can do about it. For once in his life, the old man was too clever for his own good. How much do you reckon the staircase will fetch, Charlie?’ he called out to the other man, smirking when he saw Rosy’s expression.

As she watched and listened to him, any ideas Rosy might have had about appealing to his better nature died. He simply didn’t have one, she recognised. He would enjoy destroying the house.

She heard the heavy wooden front door creak as someone pushed it open, and turned round warily, but it wasn’t another of Edward’s ‘business associates’ who had walked in, it was Guard.

He walked over to the fireplace just inside the doorway, frowning as he studied the scene in front of him.