Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

Rosie went round to the house next door every morning, because Ash’s mother knew how to weep, and that set Rosie off as well. Rosie felt a little ashamed as they clung to each other, but she desperately needed the release of their mutual tears. She felt, although this was something that she would never have admitted, that Mrs ‘Mamma’ Pendennis was more of a mother to her than her own had ever been.

In The Grampians the practical sympathy came from Millicent and Cookie. The latter sent up freshly baked biscuits and Millicent delivered them, saying, ‘Cookie says please try some of these, and we’re both so sorry for your loss, Miss Rosie, we truly are. We was very fond of him too, you know, miss. Please ring if you need anything. Would you like me to change the sheets in your room? And please let Cookie know if there’s anything you’d partickerly like.’

Most surprisingly, Ash’s death had brought out the best in her father. Hamilton McCosh was scion of a family that only two generations before had been destitute Gaelic speakers from the countryside north of Glasgow, but they had believed in education, hard work and ambition, and somehow it had come about that Hamilton had ended up in a large house in Kent, very convenient for London, with a respectable family. He had an infallible nose for taking advantage of the ups and downs of the stock markets, and a flair for marketable inventions. The family accent had slowly transmogrified into the cultured tones of Edinburgh, he had moved over to the Church of Scotland, and this year he was the captain of the golf club at Blackheath. He had played at Muirfield and at St Andrews, and he had fished for salmon and shot grouse with Lord Fermoy, who was a friend of the Duke of York. Hamilton McCosh had ‘arrived’, and he had made the most of himself. He had married a famous beauty, a high-spirited and slightly mad one, who had scandalised her friends by playing a vigorous game of tennis the day before giving birth to her first child, and campaigning vociferously on behalf of the Women’s Tax Resistance League. Hamilton McCosh had caught her on the rebound, and now, with his daughters almost grown, he also supported a varying number of mistresses, and a few sports. Of all his daughters it was Rosie to whom he was most close.

He went to the Athenaeum less often these days, and came home to sit with her. It was a little awkward at first, his approach being instinctively biblical. ‘Blessed are they that die in the Lord,’ he said, and then, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.’

‘Oh, Daddy,’ said Rosie, and he took this as a reproof.

‘I’m sorry, Rosie bairn, but I dinna ken … it’s hard to know what to say.’

She put her hand on his. ‘Daddy, I believe all those things, but I know that you don’t. It doesn’t sound right when you say it.’

‘Words never get to the heart of things, Rosie bairn,’ he said after a while, and she squeezed his fingers. Then he said, ‘Try to see what’s left. It might not seem much. But if you build on it, it’ll get bigger, surely.’

‘Daddy, what shall I do?’

‘I have always found,’ he advised, ‘that when everything goes agley and is as hard as you can bear, the most important thing is to keep busy. We are creatures who are born to work. Those who do nothing have lives that seem to go on forever and never come to anything. Between you and me, that is why I feel sorry for your mother, rather than vexed, as I should. This is wartime, lassie. We should all be busy. Do you know what I’m going to do?’

She shook her head.

‘No, I don’t either.’ She laughed at this, and he continued. ‘But I know I have to do something. It recently occurred to me that I should pay for some apprentices to learn how to make artificial limbs, and set up a workshop for them. I understand there’s a shortage. It’ll help keep us afloat, and do some good at the same time. What do you think?’

Rosie smiled. ‘It’s a lovely idea.’ Secretly she was smiling at the way that her father’s solutions to everything always involved making money. ‘But you could volunteer to be a nightwatchman, or something.’

‘The job should suit the man,’ he replied robustly. ‘I’d just be doing something that’s better done by another. Talking of jobs suiting the man, I visited Graham White’s aircraft factory recently, and all the workers are women apart from the foreman. I dare say I’d have a workshop full of women if I start making artificial limbs. Would that be dreadful, or would it be fun?’

Rosie said, ‘Why don’t you employ the wounded who’ve come back from the front? Someone with a leg missing would have a very good idea of what’s needed, wouldn’t they?’

‘Rosie bairn, that’s utterly brilliant. I shall do it straight away. I’m sure I can find a workshop, and the offcuts can be used in the braziers to keep the shop warm.’

There was a long pause, during which Mr McCosh vividly imagined everything that he would have to do in order to set up this enterprise, and then Rosie said, ‘I want to go and nurse the wounded.’

‘You do?’

‘It’s the one thing I can still do for Ash. And I’ve been visiting the Cottage Hospital an awful lot.’

Hamilton McCosh baulked. ‘Your mother would never allow it. Soldiers get wounded in all sorts of … places. There would be … intimacies involved. You’d find it most distressing. All day, every day. The sights would be horrible. For a girl like you. And the noises.’

‘And the smells,’ added Rosie. ‘But would you allow it, Daddy?’

He hesitated and looked into her wan face with its chewed lips and large wounded eyes. ‘Yes, Rosie bairn, yes, of course I would.’

‘Would you overrule Mama?’

‘Gracious me, no man ever does that. When she tells God to send an earthquake, He sends an earthquake.’

‘Please, Daddy. You’re the only one she defers to in anything.’

He patted her hand and said, ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Anyway,’ said Rosie, ‘I think I know exactly how to get round her.’

Accordingly, Hamilton McCosh steeled himself for a confrontation, and marched into the drawing room, where, by the light of gas lamps, the women of the house were at their various occupations. Ottilie was sewing, Sophie embroidering, Christabel writing a letter, Rosie listening to her mother, who was reading aloud an edifying passage from a novel by Mrs Hunt.

‘I have something to say,’ announced Hamilton McCosh, positioning himself in the centre of the carpet, with his back to the fire.

‘What is it, dear?’ asked his wife.

He cleared his throat, and then spoke quickly so as not to be interrupted.

‘Rosie has asked me, and I have given her my permission, if she can volunteer to go and care for the wounded, with the Voluntary Aid Detachment.’ There was a collective gasp of shock and surprise, and then he capped it with a masterstroke. ‘There is a war on,’ he continued, ‘and it is increasingly obvious that it will not be a short one. The freedom of all of Europe is in the balance. Luxembourg and Belgium have already fallen. It may be France or Russia or Italy next, and one day it may be us. We will never secure this freedom unless we all put our shoulders to the wheel. I expect every one of you to find something useful to do during these difficult times. I repeat, every one of you.’

‘Including me?’ asked his wife, quite horrified, and her husband nodded gravely, looking directly into her eyes.

Hamilton McCosh took advantage of the silence to stride purposefully from the room. Outside the door he encountered Millicent who had been listening surreptitiously. She bobbed, very embarrassed, and then said, ‘If you don’t mind me not minding my own business, sir, that was very well done, sir.’