Sick of Shadows - M. C. Beaton [15]
In a fusty second-class compartment they were crowded by a large woman with four sleepy cross children who kept crying and wailing. Their mother seemed indifferent to their noise and distress.
Rose fretted and fidgeted, feeling the beginnings of a headache, and could only be glad when Daisy suddenly shouted, “Shut that bleedin’ noise.”
The children stared at her in awe and then mercifully fell silent.
The train stopped at station after station, until it finally drew into Plomley and settled down with a great hiss which sounded like a giant’s sigh.
The mother prodded Daisy in the back with her umbrella as Daisy was leaving the compartment. “Just you wait till you got kids of yer own,” she shouted.
Daisy whipped round. “If I had brats like yours, I’d drown them!”
Can’t possibly be them, was P.C. Shufflebottom’s first thought on hearing Daisy’s remark. I was told to look for two grand ladies.
But then Rose descended and looked around. She saw the policeman in uniform and approached him.
“Mr. Shufflebottom?”
“Yes, indeed, ma’am. Good journey?”
“Yes, I thank you. As you probably know, I am Rose Summer and this is Miss Daisy Levine.”
“Is that your luggage?” asked the policeman nervously, looking at a pile of suitcases and hat boxes.
“We decided to travel light so as not to occasion comment,” said Rose.
Bert Shufflebottom signalled to an elderly porter. “Load the ladies’ bags on the trap, Harry.”
Rose thought briefly of that other Harry. Did he miss her? What was he doing?
The morning was cold, with patches of frost in the shadowy bits of the station platform.
They climbed into the trap outside the station. Bert made a clucking noise and the pony moved off.
“We don’t have all that much room, ladies,” said Bert. “I suggest you select the clothes you really need—we lead a simple life—and store the rest in the old stables at the back of the cottage.”
“You do not live in the police station?” asked Rose.
“Got a tidy cottage next door.”
“How old are your children?”
“Let me see, the eldest is Alfred—he’s just finishing school this year. He’s fifteen. Next is Lizzie, fourteen. Then there’s Geraldine. Her’s thirteen. After her comes Maisie at nine years. And then there’s the baby, Frankie, nine months. Frankie was unexpected like, but we ain’t complaining.”
“We will do our best not to put Mrs. Shufflebottom to too much trouble.”
“Oh, nothing bothers my Sally much. Looking forward to some grown-up female company, she is.”
I’m not going to be able to bear this, thought Rose.
They fell silent until, after a few miles, Bert pointed with his whip and said, “That be Drifton, in t’valley.”
Rose looked down the road to a huddle of houses crouched beside a river.
“And that’s the river Drif. Get some good trout there. If Alfred’s lucky with his rod arter school, we’ll have trout for tea. I likes a nice bit o’ trout.”
Rose had expected Sally Shufflebottom to be an apple-cheeked countrywoman, but the woman waiting on the dirt road outside the cottage next to the police station was tall and thin with a severe mouth and grey hair scraped back into a bun.
She came forward to greet them. “I’m Sally,” she said. “I’ve been instructed to call you just Rose and Daisy, not to occasion comment, like. My, my, look at all your luggage!”
“I told them to take out a few things and put the rest in the stables,” said Bert. “T’won’t do to look too fine and grand.”
The cottage was a rabbit warren of small rooms. There was a kitchen-cum-living-room with a great black range along one wall on which two pots were simmering. It was furnished with a horsehair sofa, a long table flanked by upright chairs, and two armchairs on either side of the range. The floor was covered in shiny green linoleum with two hooked rugs.
“I’ll show you your room,” said Sally. She led the way along a stone-flagged passage and threw open a door. There was a double bed covered in a patchwork