Roses of Yesterday ... and the next best thing

By J.D. Craig

In Jim's favourite fantasy he asks Ros if she had ever thought of him ... perhaps at the beginning of a new year or the end of an old one, perhaps even, on average, once a month. "No," she replies,smiling, "I thought of you every day."

This novel (187,000 words) consists of two stories which run concurrently. The dominant - accounting for two thirds of the text - is set mainly in the period 1912-19 while most of the subordinate action – like the outer arc of a rainbow, a reflection of the dominant – occurs in the years 1962-69. The major sequence is set mainly in London and on the Western Front, the minor in Dundee (unnamed) and Glasgow.

The title references lines from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
Each morn a thousand roses brings, you say:
Yes, but where leaves the rose of yesterday?

The main character in each of the stories is affected by the loss of a first love, and the extension to the title may be understood in two ways:
The NEXT best thing – being the next in a sequence of good things (the major strand).
The NEXT BEST thing – being the second, apparently inferior alternative (minor strand).

The book attempts to carry two main themes, and these cross both stories:
1.Affections are capable of surviving many years of separation, but a lost love may be mourned only in secret.
2.The life of a rose blossom is short – but against what yardstick, and what has the length of its life to do with its perfection? We lay too much store by longevity, and too little by the quality of life.

The stories are told by a narrator who, in a brief prologue, indicates his sources, and confesses to being himself – albeit under an assumed name - one of the minor participants. The four main characters are introduced in the short Part 1 (Budding): James soon after his birth in 1893, Rosalind (born 1894) in early childhood, Jim and Ros (born 1944 and 1945 respectively) in childhood.

In Part 2 (Blooming) James falls in love with Rosalind, and Jim with Ros. Although James appears to make some progress, the social gap between himself and Rosalind is so wide that his chances are always slim and appear to be ended by his apparently unpatriotic response to the outbreak of war in 1914. The social division between Jim and Ros is narrower, but still it creates a tension between them.

Part 3 (Blowing) contains an account of the turbulent war experience of the principal characters in the main story, and follows the changes in their lives. Interwoven with this history is Jim's experience as a social worker living in the derelict Gorbals district of Glasgow.

In Part 4 (Browning), James and Jim meet Rosalind and Ros again after many years of separation, and reconsider the choices they have made.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.D. Craig
• Release date: Jun 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476405933

Book preview

Can one who shared a sunset such as this be ever quite forgot?

In 1912, James Howard falls in love with Rosalind Compton, a young lady whom the world believes to be beyond his reach. But these are turbulent times, and the War shatters some of his convictions, and alters the course of his life. The story of Jim Dalton and Ros Farrow which begins in 1963 echoes that of James and Rosalind with which it is interwoven. The ballad of Jim and Ros is scored, however, in a minor key, and its arc is the outer reflection of James and Rosalind’s rainbow. When the two men look back on their lives, and to sunsets on different rivers, they may ask whether they gave of themselves too much or too little. And whether what they most wanted had always been behind them … or around the next corner … or already within their grasp.

Roses of Yesterday … and the next best thing

J.D. Craig

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 James D. Craig

Table of Contents

Introduction – The small print

Part 1 – Budding

Part 2 – Blooming

Chapter 1 – Bloomsbury and the Thames, June 1912

Chapter 2 – Ashtead, June 1912

Chapter 3 – Last year at school, 1962-63

Chapter 4 – Beginning a love affair, June 1963

Chapter 5 – Fluctuating fortunes, August 1912

Chapter 6 – St Andrews, September 1963

Chapter 7 – The Porterfield robbery, autumn 1912

Chapter 8 – Idyll and insult, 1963-67

Chapter 9 – Principles and ambitions, 1912-13

Chapter 10 – The serpent, 1963-67

Chapter 11 – Excursions into Kent, summer 1913

Chapter 12 – Possessed and possessing, 1963-67

Chapter 13 – New tensions, August - December 1913

Chapter 14 – Schism, October 1967 – January 1968

Chapter 15 – Marginalised, January – July 1914

Chapter 16 – Chance meeting, April 1968

Chapter 17 – Coming of war, August 1914

Chapter 18 – London, August 1968

Chapter 19 – First months of war, August 1914 – July 1915

Part 3 – Blowing

Chapter 1 – First months in Glasgow, October 1968 – January 1969

Chapter 2 – At war, July-September 1915

Chapter 3 – Glasgow, January – February 1969

Chapter 4 – Military hospital, 1915-16

Chapter 5 – Accused, February 1969

Chapter 6 – At war, 1916-17

Chapter 7 – Principles undermined, March - May 1969

Chapter 8 – At war, summer 1917

Chapter 9 – Diversions, summer 1969

Chapter 10 – At war, autumn 1917

Chapter 11 – Incompatibilities exposed, summer 1969

Chapter 12 – Consequences of war, 1917-18

Chapter 13 – Correspondence, summer 1969

Chapter 14 – Consequences of consequences, early 1918

Chapter 15 – Denouement, summer 1969

Chapter 16 – At war, spring 1918

Part 4 – Browning

Chapter 1 – Back to Civvie Street, late 1918

Chapter 2 – Old friends, summer 1999

Chapter 3 – Francis Wickham and Minnie Tring, 1919

Chapter 4 – Retrospections, 2009-12

Chapter 5 – Confessions of a telephone engineer, 1919-56

Chapter 6 – St Andrews, August 1957

The Small Print

Each morn a thousand roses brings, you say:

Yes, but where leaves the rose of yesterday?

- from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

If the personal histories which are recorded in this book had been assembled as a script for stage or screen, it would perhaps have been difficult to conceal the fact that I – its author - had a role beyond that of narrator. Not a role, certainly to attract to it an actor accustomed to ‘star billing’, but neither was I a mere ‘extra’ to the drama. And so, in order that my appearance should not occasion particular attention, or arouse a disproportionate credibility for the scenes to which my character may bear personal witness, I decided that he should adopt the veil of an assumed name.

It will be apparent, therefore, that some of those who inhabit the following pages were persons whom I knew at first hand. I have thought it proper again to alter their names. Although I have tried to be faithful both to their persons and the contributions they made in the events described, litigation may be an expensive pastime even for the innocent. And I acknowledge that, even when I have known the characters whom I have represented, I have had to rely often on others for descriptions of some of the actions in which they participated. Such descriptions may be subject to bias, the reputation of other subjects being of secondary concern to that of the reporter.

More difficult to recount with certainty have been those events which were shaped by persons I did not know, and such persons, I concede, form the majority of the cast. The action opens in 1893, and that was considerably before my time; as for later events - I had my own affairs to attend to, and could not be everywhere at once. I have, therefore, had to rely on reminiscences, many of which had lost their first freshness before ever I heard them. And such recollections, in my experience, tend with maturity to sacrifice accuracy of detail in the pursuit of an amusing or ironic conclusion. I have, however, also had access to the diaries of one of the principal characters, and the unpublished autobiography of another.

It was this last manuscript – unstinting in its analysis and determination to represent its subject as seen through the eyes of others – which was my principal inspiration for this present work. I was intrigued to discover such similarities of thought and experience in two unconnected stories that I hit upon the idea of weaving them together. But I absolve myself from the charge of plagiarism. Although the biography to which I have referred was tremendously useful to me – so useful that I could not have written this book without it –mine is much the better book, and I have closed numerous gaps and smoothed down many rough edges using information gathered from my independent reading of the places and times visited in this work. I have contributed also many comments and observations that are entirely my own. In doing so, it may be discovered that I have overtaxed the reader’s patience, but I found it impossible always to hold my tongue when I found old friends and new brought down by the thoughtlessness of others, and the follies and vanities that were entirely their own.

Part 1 - Budding

Mrs Compton caught at the back of her throat a foul odour which she imagined to consist of cabbage and tripe, and for a moment she thought she might be sick. She had survived the stench from the open privies which she and Mrs Chadwick had passed in the yard, but somehow the idea - that the new smell came from something that people would put in their mouths and swallow - was too appalling. Her explanation, however, of what so nauseated her was neither intuitive nor based on experience but, rather, was informed by what she had read of the meals on which the poor subsisted in the slums. But in this instance she was mistaken. Whilst butchers’ offal and stale vegetables made their contribution, the stink which oppressed her was more complex and included human waste that had not yet been transported to the ash pits, vapours derived from the cottage manufacture of glue, smoke from paraffin, tallow, coal and tobacco, and a very large number of unwashed bodies inhabiting filthy clothes.

Florence Compton was in Hope Court not because, in any meaningful sense, she wished to be there, but out of a sense of duty. As an even younger lady than she then was, and a more curious one, she had come across a book that had been meant only indirectly for her instruction. The book was a very old one, and its age made a nonsense of the title - most of which Florence could still remember - The Modern System of Female Education. Inside was a page torn from an exercise book, and on this her mother had copied, in her best hand, the direction that:

Ladies should consider the superintendence of the poor as their immediate office.

Persons rather older than she then was might have struggled to understand what exactly this meant but, below it, her mother had copied a further excerpt:

Young ladies should be accustomed to set apart a fixed portion of their time, as sacred to the poor, whether in relieving, instructing, or working for them, and the performance of this duty must not be left to the event of contingent circumstances but established into a principle, and wrought into a habit.

She could not now, of course, have recited those words, nor could she recall the principle ever being worked into a habit, but it had wriggled itself among the furniture of that lumber room which most possess, and from where the plaints of conscience are sometimes to be heard.

Her companion, Mrs Chadwick, was an accustomed visitor to Hope Court and Florence had suspected that that lady derived some excitement, even some physical pleasure, from her missionary work. Of course she pretended otherwise, and had persuaded Florence of their obligation – it was their duty, not only to help carry the Christian example into these heathen places that existed no more than a couple of miles from comfortable Bloomsbury, but to witness for herself how great was the need for this work which, formerly, Florence had supported only financially, and even then with some reluctance. African missions were another matter entirely.

Mrs Chadwick had not spared her – perhaps another source of pleasure. From the main thoroughfare, heavy both with horse-drawn and pedestrian traffic, they had turned into a narrower street bordered on both sides by what had once been respectable houses, older but not markedly different from those of her own neighbours. Many of the windows had, however, been boarded or bricked up, and some of the houses had been converted into workshops or storerooms.

This way, Mrs Chadwick had said, turning suddenly to her right and towards a group of men standing, hands in pockets, a few paces back from the street. Not until some of the men moved, almost unwillingly, to let them pass, did Florence see that they had been standing at the mouth of a tunnel, not more than twenty yards long but a tunnel indeed. At its entrance someone had chalked the helpful direction ‘Hope’. Florence, trying to be brave and cheerful, had read it aloud and added, … for the best.

Indeed, replied Mrs Chadwick, and we remember that St Paul identified hope as a virtue with faith and charity. But what I always think is ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’.

Emerging from the tunnel, Florence had had the sensation of stepping into another world. More than half a century later she might have likened the experience to walking into - and through - a wardrobe, but no such simile was available to her, and her astonishment stumbled for want of support. Her personal experience had taught her to expect gardens or perhaps some stables but what she found were more houses – mean, unpretentious houses – and the number of women and children she could see suggested that they must be full to overflowing. It had seemed to Florence that some of the women looked at her suspiciously, some contemptuously, but that most didn’t look at her at all. Many of the children showed less restraint, and Florence, at first attracted to them simply because they were children, stiffened when she had observed how many of them appeared in some way deformed or stigmatised. Several had sores, particularly about the eyes, and most carried evidence of bruises in various stages of repair. All of them had been dirty – not just dusty or mud spattered from a morning in the yard, but dirty below the level of the skin if such a thing were possible. They had tugged at her skirts and asked her for money, but some had immediately taunted her for being so evidently out of place.

Mrs Chadwick had spoken to them sternly, and had led Florence past the privies to a point where she could see that there were two rows of six houses built so that the backs of one row butted onto the backs of the other thus economising on bricks and space at the expense only of daylight and ventilation. Florence had followed Mrs Chadwick into a house in the middle of the row, its door - an imperfect substitute for the original - standing open. The wooden stair inside was broken in places and it was here that Florence had feared she might be sick.

Reaching the landing at the top of the stair Mrs Chadwick tapped on the first of two doors which were standing ajar, calling out, Good afternoon. Without waiting for a response she stepped into the room with Florence, very uncertainly, at her heels. Inside, a woman whom Mrs Chadwick introduced to her as Mrs Howard sat on the edge of an unmade bed with a tiny child at her exposed breast. This was Mrs Chadwick’s first visit since the birth and, in response to the inevitable questions, she learned that he had been called James and that his delivery had been easier than the last. ‘The last’, yet unable to walk, sat on the floor, her immediate safety and amusement the responsibility of her older brother, himself not yet four years old. If surviving infancy were the first object, there were worse times to be born than in the last years of Victoria’s reign. But for those who survived in the company of more brothers and sisters than hard pressed parents could comfortably support, the 1890s were far from easy.

Florence remembered that Mrs Chadwick had told her that the baby’s father was harsh and sometimes brutal but, unlike some, was neither degenerate nor uncontrollably violent, and was capable of showing care and affection. He took labouring work where he could find it, but the family’s circumstances had been reduced after his foot had been broken in an accident. As her companion talked she looked around her, seeing more now that her eyes had become accustomed to its gloom. There was, in fact, not a great deal to see, and what became more evident was the absence of even the most rudimentary furnishing. Nothing covered the floorboards which, before one or two of them had been replaced, had been painted some long forgotten colour and were now horribly stained. The bed was a makeshift affair, the ironwork head being of a different pattern to the foot, and neither fitting exactly the frame on which Mrs Howard’s too visible mattress was spread. The area in which the children sat was illuminated partly by a small coal fire in the grate around which stood a kettle and two cooking pots – all of them soot black.

Mrs Howard had not invited her visitors to sit. Florence saw now that there were two wooden crates which, upside down, supported some plates but which might have served on their ends for stools. Out of politeness she would have used them if they had been offered, but she was glad that they had not been, and Mrs Chadwick seemed content to stand. Florence found more comfort in the thought that they could not, therefore, be expected to remain very long. She was further encouraged by the sound of a heavy footfall on the stair, a sound she imagined must be that of Mr Howard returning home. But the man did not join them, instead he entered the room adjacent where he began at once to harangue someone who had apparently been there since before her own and Mrs Chadwick’s arrival. She looked in surprise briefly at Mrs Howard, and then, lingeringly, at Mrs Chadwick. She received the explanation she sought in the form of a question - put by her companion to the woman of the house.

Your landlord is as difficult as ever, Mrs Howard?

Mrs Howard looked worried, and raised a forefinger to her lips.

These walls be awfu’ thin, missus, she said.

I’m sure he’s making too much noise himself to hear me, said Mrs Chadwick, but she had lowered her voice nevertheless.

To Florence she explained that, even if the builders had ever imagined that the upper and lower levels of the cottage might be occupied by different families, they could not have considered the possibility that separate households might be established in the two rooms at each level. The arrangement, as far as the Howards were concerned, was that for four shillings a week they rented from the family next door the room in which the three women and three infants were then confined.

Florence never did return to that place. She had not long been married, and was soon to discover that she was pregnant with a child of her own. But, in that place, if a mark were made – and the condensation of a breath of mist may not drift to earth and not affect the spot on which it falls – the sucking child began its learning that there was a world beyond that room.

As one door closes, another opens.

But to what advantage if it, in turn, is bent on smacking one’s face as one tries to pass? There may be a limit to the number of broken noses one may endure before the appearance of another opening loses its charm. And running – to seize the moment - into the illusory space, must cause the inevitable collision with the closing door to be more painful.

You’ve just got to grin and bear it, his mother said.

Jim Dalton’s mother spoke with confident authority on numerous subjects, and it was not until many years later that Jim discovered how often her confidence, and his, had been entirely misplaced. With a vocation rather than formal qualification for child care, she had been introduced at an early age - in the capacity of nanny - to the household of an eminent physician. There she had picked up some germs of medical knowledge which she would employ in context - and out - for long thereafter. That application was of no great consequence one way or another – her own children’s health proving neither more nor less robust than that of the surrounding population as a whole. If it was a mystery to her why her neighbours’ progeny did not die every other week as a result of ignorance and neglect, it was a mystery she did not explore aloud.

What proved to be of greater significance, however, was Mrs Dalton’s raised aspirations to gentility which resulted, among other things, in a far higher proportion of the family budget being spent on ‘best clothes’ and ‘good food’ than was normal in the households of office clerks. Jim grew up too clean, well mannered, well spoken and well dressed than was good for him in a neighbourhood where it was unhealthy to stand distinguished from one’s peers unless the distinction was with a football or was otherwise accompanied by some prowess in hand to hand combat. Jim was neither a footballer nor a boxer and, not to put too fine a point on it, was bullied into a state of chronic melancholy at school. There was something in his temperament, however - or the strength of his mother’s influence – that caused him to retain the speech and manner that made him a victim of his fellows. Unthinkingly they sought to evict him, or force him into conformance. Jim refused to conform, but could not find the door through which an evictee might pass.

The day after the Coronation of 1953, Mrs Dalton - for some reason that seemed important at the time - had custody of the Reids and the Eastons who, when their number was added to her own pair, made for a flock of four boys and three girls, all aged between four and – Jim being the eldest - eight. Mrs Dalton had laughed when she told her sisters-in-law about the looks she’d got – were they of pity or astonishment? – from people on the bus who imagined they might all be hers. And from their appearance they might have been – as in games where one word is transformed to another by changing in steps only one letter at a time – the two most dissimilar cousins could be linked by genetic cord. Ironically, the two who were least alike were Jim and his puckish brother; Jim was the serious one, but he hated the National Health glasses he had to wear. Kids he’d never previously met - as well as many who could have used his given name if they’d so chosen – knew he would answer to ‘Specky’. It was not an affectionate nickname, but was delivered often with a sneer or suggestion of challenge - a hint that acceptance of the name acknowledged the stigma.

Within the extended family of Reids and Eastons, Jim’s age advantage created a complex of effects. With husbands at the war, his aunts and mother greeted his arrival with a super-abundance of doting attention. Within little more than a year, however, husbands had returned, and mother and aunts had begun to have further and more urgent, or natural claims on their nursing. Those infants who followed Jim into the family absorbed their ration of the attentive love their world could spare and, having known nothing better or worse, slept in contentment. Jim, in primitive confusion, lacking the tools of reason, was left to wonder at his abandonment and what he had done wrong.

Then, later, came a prestige in being first, and he was conscious that the others deferred to him and - at least the girls - asked him to fix or explain things, or give them donkey rides on his back. But, as the fifties progressed - leaving Ministry of Food margarine and ration books in their wake - Jim became aware in the attitude of his father and uncles that the advantage he had secured in being first was ebbing away. At the same time, the lads in the school playground with torn trousers and dirty faces began to acquire bicycles and to talk about what they had seen on television. In the Dalton household such extravagances were impossible. Sturdy, well-fitting shoes for quickly growing feet were expensive and, after rationing ended, the price of food went up. Jim’s misery was compounded – vilified for being a snob, it became slowly apparent to him that his family was poorer than most.

Jim, characteristically, kept his dissatisfaction to himself although his mother did not. She grew more frustrated that her husband made no progress in his work. Certainly it was good that she could refer to him going to his office, and that he left each morning wearing a tie. But he earned, she well knew, less – maybe much less – than many for whom a tie would have been as pretentious an accessory as it would have been impracticable. It was always supposed that Jim’s little brother was upset more than he by the eruption of a row between their parents – it was his brother who, when things became noisily unpleasant, was the one who might wet the bed they shared – while Jim affected to be unconcerned. Again it was Jim who quietly took the heavy spanking when his father’s frustration required some physical expression. His stoicism did him little good; his brother, on the other hand, quickly learned that an exhibition of misery and fright offered some effective protection.

J. Dalton senior, who lacked the initiative or intelligence to secure a more responsible position, never raised a hand to his wife although many would have been provoked to do so as her occasional complaints progressed into persistent nagging. From time to time she screamed, and he roared then sulked. Her screaming was a sore disappointment to him, as indeed was the fading of her looks which began earlier and proceeded more rapidly than he had ever thought possible. She too was at heart disappointed – she had thought she was marrying well, and had found out too late that she could have done much better.

Jim remembered, in particular, rows that had occurred on the day before his birthday – the week before Christmas - in two consecutive years. It was perhaps only because of this association with his own anniversary that Jim noticed it at all. His father had taken time off work – no one seemed to know the reason because his excuse about buying something for Christmas was soon exposed as a lie. Jim had no idea what it was all about, but his mother was very angry, and he woke to his birthday in pyjamas and bed that his brother had made unpleasantly damp.

Jim’s childhood could not by any stretch of the imagination have been described as happy, but he would never confess this to anyone. If a mark were made – and a man may not whisper his lover’s name in the night and not alter the tracing of a destiny – the boy began his learning that the love of others was a transient thing, but his love would be eternal.

Rosalind, uncertain of her ability even to walk in a straight line, almost stumbled as she approached the box. It was open, and the lid had been placed carefully, if unimaginatively, in Peter’s cot. It was a small box – for a child as young as Peter anything larger would have been grotesque – and yet it seemed still too deep. As she approached she could see only waves of pleated white satin – so much white satin. Perhaps, through the working of some belated miracle, it was empty. She struggled unsuccessfully to conceal the trembling of her arms and legs, and even her head she could not keep still. Then she saw him, wrapped in the white woollen shawl that had been her own christening shawl. This covered the infant’s sparse blond hair, and was so arranged that it hid the swelling in his neck; only his face could be seen, an unrecognisable face – not white as Rosalind had expected, but a pale, greyish blue. It was a face somehow shamed by the whiteness in which it lay, and someone in the room said it was clear his soul had left him.

Say goodbye to your little brother, Rosalind, her father commanded gently.

Rosalind whispered the words she had rehearsed and, with them out, her trembling ceased and she was calm. She turned with great dignity for a child so young, and left the room. Her poise was perhaps the more exceptional in view of her responsibility for Peter’s death. She had heard it said that, though she had not been ill herself, it might have been she who had carried the infection from her playground to the nursery. Her fratricide was therefore, though whispered, in the public domain. What only she knew, however, was that her responsibility went much deeper. Peter’s fever had worsened, he had stopped being sick but he seemed now unable to swallow. His neck had swollen horribly, and her mother had told her that she must pray for him more earnestly than she had ever prayed for anything before. They must, she said, all beg God to allow Peter to stay with them; only if they all prayed with all their hearts could he now be saved.

After Peter died the vicar came again. He prayed, and they all prayed, but now they prayed for Peter to be at peace in Heaven. No one spoke about the earlier prayers, and Rosalind did not confess that then, in her heart, what she had wanted most was that the crying should stop. If a mark were made – and none may hear the last note of an infant’s dying cry and not resolve some reshaping of the world – the child began her learning that the world was a hard, material place where suffering was to be expected, and bravely borne.

Samuel Compton, a manufacturer of lanterns, had inherited the family business in uncertain times. The firm had adjusted its product range in response to kerosene becoming available in large quantities. Kerosene would have had no attraction for any maker of lanterns were it not a combustible fuel, but combustible fuels are inherently risky, and the fire which destroyed the workshop undoubtedly contributed to the early death of Samuel’s father. Samuel had rebuilt, and adjusted the range again with the arrival of acetylene burners which projected a much stronger light. But, by the time his daughter Rosalind was thirteen years old, production of motor cars was increasing rapidly and his investment in larger premises and new machine tools began to deliver handsome returns. Though the firm was generating more income than it had ever done before, Mr Compton knew that its prosperity could not be sustained without his committing himself to it entirely. His customers, many of whom perished within a year or two of their starting out, were constantly seeking improvements in design. As new builders - in increasing numbers - took the place of those that disappeared, Compton was well aware that his own survival depended on their using his lamps, rather than those made by someone else.

In the years following the infant Peter’s death, the family was able to afford more of the luxuries that increasingly distinguished them from the craftsmen, managers and tradespeople whom they had previously considered their equals. But Compton had less time to enjoy these comforts, and his temper, when he was at home, was not to be relied upon. For the most part he left the management of the house to his wife, Florence, who in turn left it more to the servants than he imagined, or would have approved. When he found something amiss – and from time to time he did - he investigated in a succession of ‘whys’ beyond the immediate cause until he was satisfied that he had got to the very bottom of the matter. His final question was usually answered - to Florence’s embarrassment - in a confession of her own inattention, naivety or ignorance. These revelations made no great difference to the management of the household. Nor did the occasional domestic crisis unsettle the prevailing arrangements for Rosalind’s governance, responsibility for which Compton was content to leave with his wife. These arrangements had for some time served to optimise the comfort of all three parties concerned, but Rosalind’s independence was far from yet confirmed.

Her father’s newspaper reported disturbances at the hustings and predicted that, with Labour and Irish support, Asquith would be returned, and Lloyd George would be able to force his budget through, one way or another. Compton grumbled his disapproval. Florence was sewing, and Rosalind was making slow progress with a novel that her father thought she should not be reading. He was not certain of his ground, however, and preferred not to risk revealing an ignorance of contemporary literature. His mood was affected also that evening by the unease that was a consequence of his having changed sides. His father had been a Liberal supporter, as had his grandfather.

If I had a vote, I should certainly cast it for Mr Asquith, Rosalind said.

Had she been a boy, the privilege of registering her favour for one side or the other was something for which she would be required to wait for at least six more years and so the Tory interest had little immediate cause for concern. Her not being a boy rendered the exclamation absurd, and her father fastened his irritation upon that absurdity.

Until recently I have not been very much exercised on the subject of female suffrage because I imagined that most women would have the sense - that I know your mother has - to be guided by their husbands in the matter of how their votes should be cast. But it becomes increasingly apparent, Compton continued, that my confidence has been misplaced. If Mrs Pankhurst were to prevail, I fear we might as well determine parliamentary elections by the throwing of dice.

Florence who, while her husband was in the room, was decidedly of his opinion, said nothing. Rosalind, however, was furious, and not so much in awe of her father as to be so easily silenced. She had seen the poster in which a woman in full academic dress was penned with a convict and a lunatic - like them, the learned lady was denied the vote.

You think Mrs Pankhurst or the Queen less qualified to exercise judgement than a docker or road sweeper?

The question was a reasonable one in so far as it expressed a principle, but the tone in which it had been asked was insubordinate, impertinent and, to her father’s ears, deeply offensive. Further, as Samuel Compton was aware, it was inherently flawed. In the first place, most dockers and road sweepers were no more entitled to vote than their wives. In the second, the Queen stood constitutionally above politics, and, in prison where she belonged, Mrs Pankhurst, even had she been a man, would have been disenfranchised.

You are talking nonsense, you silly child, he said and, in a flush of temper, reversed his earlier decision to ignore the book she was reading, and demanded to know where she had obtained it.

The title of the book was The Man who was Thursday and, though Compton recognised it, he could not recall what he had heard about it, for good or bad. Rosalind had selected it herself from the circulating library because the title had intrigued her, and she had imagined something more interesting. Even before her father’s attack, she had begun to feel that her judgement had let her down. She rose quickly, placed the book on top of the piano, and ran upstairs.

By the time Ros Farrow was seventeen, she had developed the unconscious habit, when speaking of her father - an unsuccessful lawyer – of assuming inflections of voice and facial expression to convey affectionate condescension. She could not remember her first visit to a circus but she had heard her mother describe it more than once, and she was happy to take possession of the story. Ros had been sitting in Mr Farrow’s lap while white ponies had danced in the ring, acrobats had tumbled, and clowns in baggy trousers and enormous shoes had done violence to one another from buckets of whitewash. She had sat in wide-eyed rapture as sparkling young men with dark hair and narrow hips had flown from one high swinging trapeze to another, trusting with amazing courage that the bar they stretched for would be within their reach before they fell. Then a cage had been erected around the ring, and the lions, resenting their exhibition and growling with menace, had been tricked into an entrance. Perhaps Ros had not noticed the cage, perhaps she had not been persuaded that it afforded the necessary degree of security, perhaps its being there simply heightened her appreciation of the danger. There were no clowns now, nor was there in the demeanour of the man with the whip a certainty that all was well. This component of the show, Ros’s instinct told her – though she could not have so articulated it at the time - was unrehearsed and unpredictable. Mr Farrow became aware of a warm wetness seeping through the woollen fabric of his trousers. Lifting his daughter the few inches required for inspection of the damage, he then passed her to his wife. What he intended Maureen to do with her was unclear, nor was it apparent how the transfer effected a remedy for any of those involved.

If another mark were made – and a butterfly’s wing may not touch a withering oak leaf without leaving a print of its passing – the child began her learning that excitement was a passing thing, as so also were men.

In another favourite story, an older Ros had asked her father how it was that ships remained upright in the ocean. According to Ros, the man who was, if nothing else, the most knowledgeable person she knew, had answered in two unintelligible words: ‘surface tension’. Why ships did not keel over in rough seas remained a mystery but Ros had learned that there was a scientific reason and that their stability was not a matter of lucky chance. She learned also – not immediately but gradually from this time forward – that her father could be a source of humour if one troubled to look for it.

But Vincent Farrow, by the time his daughter was seventeen, was not a man who smiled often. Though shorter than average height, his appearance was unquestionably forbidding. He was stiff and straight and his face bore an unchanging expression of grimness no matter what he happened to be doing. His career as a solicitor had been interrupted at an early stage by the war. Joining a tank regiment, his commitment, courage and intelligence had resulted in his being promoted quickly to the rank of major. One hot day in Egypt, in September 1942, Farrow suddenly found himself looking at the dreadful choice of either disobeying an order which he knew to be ill-judged, or leading his squadron in a virtually suicidal attack on an enemy position. He obeyed the order – for the choice existed only in imagination – and, as he had predicted, the gains were insignificant but the losses among his men were terrible. To be trapped inside a burning tank is a fearful way to die. To superficial inspection, Major Farrow survived, but the damage done was sub-structural and lasting. Returning to his profession after the war, he found that he was unable to continue from where he had left off, and to re-launch the career he had seemed so well equipped to follow. Frustrated with himself and cynically critical of too many of those who subsequently crossed his path, he struggled to maintain for Maureen and Ros the social position he had taken previously for granted.

Part 2 - Blooming

Chapter 1

Despite its unpromising start in life, the baby - James Howard – that Florence Compton was later to regard with more interest but less sympathy – survived. Through the early years of his childhood he became accustomed to the visits of ladies from the great church. Mrs Chadwick was succeeded in time by Mrs Brown whom the family called Mrs Bull’s-eye though not, of course, to her very red face. Although he never quite understood how it worked, through the formative years James learned from his mother that being polite to those ladies, and playing the part that she taught him, was worth the effort. Most of the other families in the court didn’t seem to agree, but more fool them! Not that they ever got any money as such, but some things were as good as money – warm clothes that had hardly been worn, some of them, and always meat or pudding at Christmas.

Why James should grow up not resenting the memory of Mrs Chadwick’s intrusions, nor the condescending patronage of Mrs Brown, and began attending their church and not the mission, would be difficult to say. Even his mother knew that keeping a nominal connection with the mission was all that was required. But one Sunday morning James woke with words clear formed in his mouth – like surviving relics of a disturbed dream. They were words he recognised though it had been many weeks since he had heard them:

I was glad when they said unto me, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord.’

And dressing as well as he could – which was considerably below what the congregation of the mother church considered decent Sunday apparel – into the house of the Lord he went.

His tender age, his unaffected delight in the music, the vestments and the splendour of this gothic cathedral in miniature, charmed the sentiments of some including, most importantly, the vicar. Some of his flock wondered whether it was appropriate to welcome and encourage the young visitor who so clearly did not belong when they had gone to the trouble and continuing expense of building and supporting a mission church in the slums. The vicar, however, was with the sentimentalists, and cherished James with an enthusiasm that James gratefully returned. Quite quickly he began to demonstrate surprising talents – he could sing and he could talk. His joy was the singing of psalms and hymns, and when asked his catechism he would expand on the set answers with an innocent fervour that witnessed his commitment to God and the Church.

James’s progress was assisted by the legislation which had extended educational provision into even the poorest areas although he mastered the 3Rs so quickly that the school room became soon a tedious place. But it was a place where he excelled with little effort, and he left his lessons not in the least fatigued but full of energy to learn something new. Again the vicar helped him, lending him books that he found more of a challenge. The history and English literature he enjoyed but, though he wished desperately to succeed, he floundered in Latin. He compared the psalms in Latin and in English, and tried to build a vocabulary and establish the rules for translation, but the rules seemed for ever to be inconsistently applied.

When he graduated from the Sunday School he became a teacher himself, and was a militant supporter of the temperance movement. By June 1912 Hope Court had disappeared, and the Howard family, though still in the East End and still overcrowded, had a home of their own. James worked as a clerk in a shipping agent’s office but had ambitions – very private ambitions – to do better for himself. Those ambitions did not necessarily include Rosalind Compton – that is to say that they pre-dated his interest in the daughter of the rich and superior Mr and Mrs Samuel Compton, and were not dependent on her reciprocating that interest – but, at this moment, she complemented those ambitions very well.

On this, the last Thursday of the month, he would be seeing her again. And not just seeing her – she, too, would be at the meeting to make arrangements for the summer picnic.

In contrast, as Rosalind Compton - now closer to eighteen than seventeen - prepared to go out, she thought nothing of James Howard at all. In fact, she thought little enough about the summer picnic meeting. Altogether more pressing on her mind was the fact that her parents seemed to be encouraging Timothy Westlake to visit more often, this despite the fact that Timothy required no encouragement, and fewer invitations rather than more would have pleased her.

Though not a striking beauty according to the fashion of the age, Rosalind was capable of being considered beautiful, at least while her skin retained those youthful qualities of pliancy and texture to which no simile can do justice. It hardly matters what was the colour of her eyes, though in the evening or on a dull day they were gray and, in sunshine, the palest blue. It hardly matters either what was the colour of her hair, though it too varied according to the light, and on a spectrum from Indian yellow to maize. What did matter to James Howard and Timothy Westlake was that she was not many inches over five feet tall, and in all respects perfectly proportioned to her height. And what mattered most to both was that she was demur, elegant, undiscovered - apparently unattached to anyone beyond her immediate family.

Timothy Westlake was some years older than Rosalind. His mother and Mrs Compton had been friends for many years, and Rosalind had met him several times. She had first thought him very superior, an impression he had encouraged by appearing hardly to notice her. Long before he had begun to take a concealed interest in Rosalind, she had adjusted her opinion – his superiority, she decided, resided more in his imagination than the real world. But, as his manner towards her altered, her assessment softened without raising the temperature of her affection much above the lukewarm. She thought he worked, if not in the Bank of England, at least in some adjacent institution, and she knew that her father had come to set great store by his advice. The demand for car lamps seemed now almost insatiable, and Samuel Compton was looking to raise more capital in order to further increase production.

The father’s support and good opinion was something which Westlake rejoiced in, and did all he could to preserve and develop. It certainly afforded him opportunities to see and to impress Rosalind, but he could hardly have imagined that his advantage might also be an impediment. Rosalind was determined that she should not be bullied into an engagement and, by unconscious extension, equally determined that she should not appear to concede to her parents choosing her husband for her. It was almost the case – though she would never have admitted it even to herself – that she would rather make a bad choice on her own than accept a good husband who was picked out for her by her father. She would not have admitted it because she had infinite confidence in her ability to make the best of choices for the best of reasons. Not that she was in the least hurry to make any choice at all – it was not her way to buy a new hat without first trying on several.

James arrived to find Marshall, the old verger, preparing the room for the meeting. A retired railwayman, he was not wholly comfortable in some aspects of his work though he was punctual - which is to say that he was never late, but neither were his preparations completed with much time to spare. If a meeting were scheduled for 7.30, the room would be ready by 7.30 but not many minutes before. He looked at James as though James had broken into his private apartments and caught him in his underwear.

James had hoped - without cause or precedent - that Rosalind might also be early, but she wasn’t. Keeping out of Marshall’s way, James took himself to the far end of the room and, affecting a serious interest, began to study the notice board. He remained there despite his first glance informing him that it held nothing that was new and of any relevance to himself. Fifty years later, this small theatre would be known to the congregation as ‘the old hall’, and generations of paint would fail to conceal the age of its plaster. Fifty years later the wainscot would be scratched and chipped and altogether wrong, but in 1912 the room was smart and James was pleased to be there. The gas lighting was, even then, thought to be inadequate but on a bright June evening, sunlight flooded through the high, frosted glass panes.

James turned quickly from the notice board as he heard the street door open, but the newcomer was Edward. Edward was about a year older than James and, like James, he took his religion seriously. Most of their contemporaries, even among those who were in full membership, did not. These two young men shared, therefore, a tenuous affinity and affection for each other – tenuous because of the enormous differences that distinguished them in respect of family background, education, financial security and immediate prospects. Despite renewed resolutions to the contrary, each was liable to find himself suddenly embarrassed by revealing an experience that might affront the sensitivities or expectations of the other. Edward remembered when James had first appeared at the church – distinctly ragged, his finger nails black at the ends, and an unwashed odour about his person which was unpleasant. His clothes were better fitting now - though machine made in the cheapest material, and his trouser seat and jacket sleeves were highly polished. His hands were now scrupulously clean, but an odour clung to him still, and Edward rightly guessed that he would have been mortified to know that this was spoken of behind his back.

Edward read widely in an effort to understand the tension which he feared might one day tear the country apart in civil war. Why were the poor, poor when the country was rich and ruled an empire that was the greatest the world had ever known? Was that poverty perhaps necessary for the great system to work – the poor are always with you he remembered. How far was the poverty of individuals their own fault, or at least their fathers’ fault? He had been reading Hard Times by Charles Dickens and it had awakened in him a new concern. He was more pleased to see James than James was to see him, and after the briefest of preliminaries he asked his friend for his opinion.

According to The Bible, we are required to be chaste before we marry and, of course, neither of us would dream of marrying a girl who was not chaste.

James looked serious and nodded.

This poor chap, Stephen Blackpool, is married to a woman who is no help or comfort to him but - worse than that - in order to buy gin, she sells what little Stephen owns. Despite this, he is bound to her by law and by the Church. He works long hours in some terrible factory but he can make no progress – indeed he is sinking – because she is dragging him down. Stephen, poor chap, says it’s all a muddle, and it is.

James was not sure what this had to do with chastity before marriage, and said so.

Well, Edward went on, one has to ask why did Stephen marry her in the first place? I realise that the woman she is now is not the woman he married, but why didn’t he see the possibility of her becoming the woman she did? Presumably because he didn’t get to know her well enough. And all our rules make it easier for a woman to hide who she is behind a picture of the person she would like appear. I just find it rather frightening.

James was frightened more by the prospect of not being able to hide some of his own past than by any anxiety that the woman of his choice might have anything to hide from him, and so had little enthusiasm for the topic, or sympathy with his friend’s argument.

As they talked, James watched the other teachers arrive and take seats on either side of the table. Marshall had disappeared, but still Rosalind had not come. James and Edward sat down together, James selecting his chair so that there was an empty place to his right, the side nearer to the door. The door opened again but it was Mrs Agnew who appeared, a little flushed, and she sat down beside him. For some moments he was made very conscious of her presence as she struggled to recover her breath.

The superintendant opened the meeting. They all knew why they were there – final arrangements for the Sunday School excursion had to be made, and individual responsibilities confirmed. Although the Sunday School had traditionally gone to Southend, after two successive years when it had rained, a change had been called for. The decision for Ashtead in Surrey had not been a unanimous one, and Mr Vickery and Miss Hardpiece required no invitation to remind the mistaken and misguided that they had never liked the idea. Mr Stephens, the superintendant, took his copy of Gratton’s Sunday School Excursion Guide from his pocket and Mr Vickery fixed on it a contemptuous stare which reminded everyone that the last time he had seen that little book he had listed a string of errors, many of which were a consequence of the book’s being now ten years out of date. Mr Stephens slipped the little book back in his pocket.

Mr Vickery’s minor triumph did not satisfy him, however, and he pursued the vanquished publication as though intending to finish it for good.

I see you have Gratton’s book with you again, Mr Stephens, he said. Was there something more in it that you wished to bring to our attention? We are committed now to Ashtead - for better or for worse. I need hardly repeat my own view of that matter, and I cannot see what further use we might have for a volume which I have already indicated to have become seriously deficient.

This challenge to Mr Stephens’ authority was more penetrating than usual, and even Mr Vickery’s ally, Miss Hardpiece, seemed a little embarrassed. Mr Stephens brought the Guide from his pocket again, and placed it in front of him on the table.

Mr Vickery, he said, if you have examined this book as closely as you imply you have, you will know that it contains a useful list of games and other activities. It also provides us with a memorandum of things we ought to have considered. I thought about copying these before I came to this meeting – I was, in this idea, mindful of the aversion you have developed to this well-intentioned book – but I concluded that this would be dishonest and unfair to Mr Gratton.

At this moment, looking neither flushed nor sounding in the least breathless, Rosalind arrived. She apologised to Mr Stephens, and said that she hoped she hadn’t missed anything concerning her or her own class. Mr Stephens told her that she hadn’t and, a little further up on the opposite side of the table, James thought she looked even more beautiful than ever.

Mr Stephens and Mrs Agnew had visited the chosen site at Ashtead a few days before, and they reported on it enthusiastically. The London and South West Railway station was on the common itself. The common was magnificent – twelve hundred acres, all freely accessible, and including countless beautiful trees. Mr Curwood of The Rosary had been engaged as caterer and, in addition to the usual picnic and refreshments, he was able to offer access to private grounds with swings, donkeys and a switchback railway. Both thought the lavatory facilities – always something of a problem at Southend – sufficient and, if it did rain, there was accommodation under cover. A programme of games - with indoor alternatives - was drawn up and James, while having supervision of his own class, was delegated to organise races and football. Rosalind was asked to supervise games for the younger children. James saw an opportunity.

Mr Chairman, he said, the younger children will have running races, too, will they not? Will these be my responsibility or will Miss Compton organise them?

I thought it was understood that you would be in charge of all the races, Mr Howard, though of course, as we agreed, you should recruit assistance to identify winners and runners up. Perhaps Miss Compton will help organise the little ones.

Rosalind, looking at Mr Stephens, said that she would do this as a matter of course. James felt a sinking realisation that he was making an issue out of nothing – clearly there was no conflict between his role and Rosalind’s but he looked towards her for a response. She gave him none and, when she turned her eyes from Mr Stephens, they fell lazily on an area of the table directly in front of her.

It took about an hour to go through the plans for the excursion to Ashtead, and agree who was going to do what. At the end of that time, Edward turned in his chair and invited James to walk with him to the river. On such an evening the Embankment was an inviting prospect, but he put the