Rosie knew there was a tender place inside him for she’d seen glimpses of it many times. He loved her too, in his own way, and he was proud of her. The only way she knew how to help him then, and now, was to look after him and the boys as best she could. At least that way he wouldn’t bring yet another woman to the house. He didn’t have much luck with women.
From that night of the Harvest Home in 1945 when Florrie Langford had informed her Seth and Norman were only her half-brothers, and later on when she’d found Heather had joined her father in his bed, Rosie had gone out of her way to find out about her family history.
It hadn’t been easy. People were too scared of Cole to gossip to her. But along with being nosy, Rosie was also persistent, and bit by bit she pieced it all together.
Ethel Parker, Seth and Norman’s mother, was reputed to have been the beauty of the county with long dark hair and sultry eyes. Her father who was a farmer somewhere out beyond Glastonbury had thrown her out when she became pregnant by Cole, and she came to live at May Cottage with him and his parents. They got married just before Seth was born in 1927. In 1934 Ethel vanished, leaving her boys, then seven and six, with their father. Legend had it that she ran off with a Welsh travelling salesman.
By the time Ruby Blackwell arrived in answer to an advertisement for a housekeeper in the autumn of 1936, the boys were running wild and out of control. By all accounts she did her best to be a mother to them, and bring order into a chaotic house, but within a year Rosie was born.
Rosie wished she could remember more about her mother; it seemed awful not to have strong visual pictures in her head of someone so important. But all the images she had from her early childhood were just cloudy fragments, a striped blouse, auburn fluffy hair, a small nervous woman who, when she wasn’t cooking and cleaning, sat in a chair by the stove knitting.
Yet she could recall in great detail the day her mother vanished, even though she was only six. She had gone to play with Janice Mirrel after school, and it was tipping down with rain. Mrs Mirrel got very cross in the evening when Ruby didn’t turn up to collect Rosie, she kept muttering something about ‘taking advantage’. Seth turned up eventually to collect her, which in itself was a very unusual event; he was sixteen then, he’d come on his bike and was soaked to the skin. Rosie overheard him explaining to Mrs Mirrel that he’d only just got back from working in Bridgwater to find the house empty and Ruby still out.
Rosie rode home on the crossbar of Seth’s bike and it was very scary because it was so dark and wet. At home the stove was out, and Seth told her to go to bed straight away before her father got back.
Cole and Norman must have come home late that same night because they were downstairs when she woke the next morning. Cole said her mother must have gone up to London to see a relative and she’d be back in a few days.
But of course Ruby had never come back, and eventually Cole said he thought she must have been killed in an air raid.
Until then the war hadn’t really affected Rosie personally. For as long as she could remember, the sounds of planes roaring overhead, grown-ups talking about rationing, evacuees, clothing coupons and being called up had just been a part of life, the same as it was for every other child of her age. Sometimes she was jarred into realizing that elsewhere there were some very bad things happening because adults’ eyes filled with tears when they spoke of deaths in air raids or soldiers being killed. But her father wasn’t away fighting like many of her schoolfriends’ fathers, and even when a stick of bombs was dropped on the moors near Burtle, no one was hurt.
When her father said her mother had been killed in an air raid, war became suddenly very real, not some distant threat. She couldn’t understand why her mother should be singled out to
From that night of the Harvest Home in 1945 when Florrie Langford had informed her Seth and Norman were only her half-brothers, and later on when she’d found Heather had joined her father in his bed, Rosie had gone out of her way to find out about her family history.
It hadn’t been easy. People were too scared of Cole to gossip to her. But along with being nosy, Rosie was also persistent, and bit by bit she pieced it all together.
Ethel Parker, Seth and Norman’s mother, was reputed to have been the beauty of the county with long dark hair and sultry eyes. Her father who was a farmer somewhere out beyond Glastonbury had thrown her out when she became pregnant by Cole, and she came to live at May Cottage with him and his parents. They got married just before Seth was born in 1927. In 1934 Ethel vanished, leaving her boys, then seven and six, with their father. Legend had it that she ran off with a Welsh travelling salesman.
By the time Ruby Blackwell arrived in answer to an advertisement for a housekeeper in the autumn of 1936, the boys were running wild and out of control. By all accounts she did her best to be a mother to them, and bring order into a chaotic house, but within a year Rosie was born.
Rosie wished she could remember more about her mother; it seemed awful not to have strong visual pictures in her head of someone so important. But all the images she had from her early childhood were just cloudy fragments, a striped blouse, auburn fluffy hair, a small nervous woman who, when she wasn’t cooking and cleaning, sat in a chair by the stove knitting.
Yet she could recall in great detail the day her mother vanished, even though she was only six. She had gone to play with Janice Mirrel after school, and it was tipping down with rain. Mrs Mirrel got very cross in the evening when Ruby didn’t turn up to collect Rosie, she kept muttering something about ‘taking advantage’. Seth turned up eventually to collect her, which in itself was a very unusual event; he was sixteen then, he’d come on his bike and was soaked to the skin. Rosie overheard him explaining to Mrs Mirrel that he’d only just got back from working in Bridgwater to find the house empty and Ruby still out.
Rosie rode home on the crossbar of Seth’s bike and it was very scary because it was so dark and wet. At home the stove was out, and Seth told her to go to bed straight away before her father got back.
Cole and Norman must have come home late that same night because they were downstairs when she woke the next morning. Cole said her mother must have gone up to London to see a relative and she’d be back in a few days.
But of course Ruby had never come back, and eventually Cole said he thought she must have been killed in an air raid.
Until then the war hadn’t really affected Rosie personally. For as long as she could remember, the sounds of planes roaring overhead, grown-ups talking about rationing, evacuees, clothing coupons and being called up had just been a part of life, the same as it was for every other child of her age. Sometimes she was jarred into realizing that elsewhere there were some very bad things happening because adults’ eyes filled with tears when they spoke of deaths in air raids or soldiers being killed. But her father wasn’t away fighting like many of her schoolfriends’ fathers, and even when a stick of bombs was dropped on the moors near Burtle, no one was hurt.
When her father said her mother had been killed in an air raid, war became suddenly very real, not some distant threat. She couldn’t understand why her mother should be singled out to
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