New Arrivals at Mulberry Lane Read online

  NEW ARRIVALS AT MULBERRY LANE

  Rosie Clarke

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

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  About New Arrivals at Mulberry Lane

  1943 Mulberry Lane, London. In the midst of another bleak winter, life is hard for the residents of The Lane.

  When Rose Merchant arrives at Mulberry Lane, she is carrying a secret that haunts her. How can she tell her landlady and the Lanes’ matriarch Peggy Ashley that she is the daughter of a murderer?

  As Rose learns that she is amongst friends she gradually learns to trust and even to love. But when Peggy’s estranged husband Laurie returns home for good, both Rose and Peggy’s lives are once again turned upside down.

  Can they both find their way through the heartache to find happiness?

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About New Arrivals at Mulberry Lane

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  About Rosie Clarke

  About the Mulberry Lane Series

  About the Workshop Girls Series

  Also by Rosie Clarke

  Become an Aria Addict

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  The girl stood hesitating on the corner of Mulberry Lane, watching as people visited the pub and the shops, calling out and talking to each other, laughing in the manner of old acquaintances. Despite the blackened ruins of a building that had obviously been bombed during the Blitz and was still not completely cleared, it looked a friendly place and Rose was attracted to it because it was a pub and what she’d been used to, what she’d always known before. She’d grown up with the hustle and bustle of a pub and, in spite of things she would rather forget, it was drawing her on.

  London was vast and had seemed, in the first hours of her time here, hostile to a girl from a small country village. The war these past years had left great dark scars, destroying whole streets in some areas and leaving rubble through which grass and weeds struggled for light, inhabited only by the rats and billboards on which posters had been pasted. After leaving the crowded railway station that first night, she’d spent hours sitting in a late-night café, shivering and afraid, until the man behind the bar told her about a hostel where she could get a cheap bed for the night.

  Rose shuddered, still able to smell the stink of that night shelter but knowing that she could never go back to the life that had been hers. Nor did she want to, even though she’d had a warm bed, food to eat, her wages and people she’d known all her life – and yet she hadn’t really known them at all. Friends she’d thought really cared for her had turned against her; she’d been shunned and even spat on and all for something that wasn’t her fault… But she didn’t want to think about that ever again. She couldn’t go back, so she must go on – and that meant she had to find work. Since that first night, her wandering footsteps had brought her here, outside this public house, and she was conscious of feeling tired, cold and hungry, in need of food, somewhere to wash, and a bed where she could sleep in safety.

  The Pig & Whistle was an old building, the paintwork peeling in places, but it was still attractive. The windows were clean and so were the nets at the upstairs windows. Pubs were usually warm and it was often easy to find work there. Rose could cook and clean and wait on tables. She’d done it all her life, for as long as she could remember – or since she was nine or ten years old and now she was nineteen, a pretty fair-haired girl with green eyes and a smile that had once come naturally but was now wary.

  She crossed the road, which was cobbled and uneven, and went under the brick arch into the pub yard, pausing to admire the tubs of bright flowers that someone had put there, as if to defy the drabness of a world at war. It was a bright day, the 24th of January 1944, and the wind, which had begun to rise, was cold. The door at the back of the pub was open at the top like a stable door, the smell of cooking that floated out to her enticing and somehow welcoming. It was much like the pub she’d served in at home… but that was no longer her home. She was in London now and she’d chosen it because here they would not know her – or know that she was the daughter of a murderer. London was too war-torn and battered to bother its head about what happened in a small village hundreds of miles away.

  She pulled at her crumpled grey skirt, trying to shake out the creases that were there because she hadn’t changed since she arrived in the city; the hostel had no privacy and she hadn’t wanted to take off her clothes.

  ‘Come in,’ a pleasant voice said as she knocked on the door and the girl reached over and opened the lock at waist-height. She walked into the large kitchen, which smelled delicious and was redolent of herbs and baking. ‘Hello, I’m Peggy Ashley – who are you?’ asked the owner of the voice.

  Rose studied the pretty blonde woman. She looked as if she might be in her late thirties or perhaps early forties, very attractive, even enveloped in a large white apron, as she was; her hair was almost hidden beneath her cap, though it kept escaping to fall over her face in damp, curling tendrils.

  ‘I’m Rose… Rose Marchant,’ she said. Only the second part of the name was a lie. She’d thought that best. ‘I’ve come to London looking for work… I can cook and clean and clear tables, but I’m not much good at anything else.’

  Peggy Ashley laughed and Rose liked her at once. She was glad she’d been honest – as honest as she dared to be. ‘Well, Rose Marchant, you’ve come to the right place if you’re telling the truth. I have young twins and they’re a bit of a handful to tell the truth, especially Fay. Her brother is quieter, but he does what she does so…’ Peggy clearly adored them. ‘They’re resting for the moment but it won’t last…’

  ‘Do you want help with the children?’

  ‘I want a girl who doesn’t mind what she does,’ Peggy said, her bright blue eyes seeming to pierce Rose’s soul. ‘Did you see my advert in the window?’

  ‘No, I just thought it looked a nice place to work. Your tubs in the arch look so pretty – they make the rest of the lane brighter. What are the flowers? You don’t see many at this time of the year.’

  ‘Christmas roses. Haven’t they lasted well? A friend of mine did that for me as a gift last month, and the lane needs something to cheer it up,’ Peggy said. ‘I don’t know how it looks to you, but that derelict bakery is an eyesore – and the lawyer’s office that burned down has never been fully cleared. They sent someone to make it safe at the time and that’s all they’ve done. It’s a shame…’ She continued to look at Rose as if she liked what she saw. ‘May I ask what made you decide to come here, to Mulberry Lane?’

  ‘I… needed a change. I wasn’t happy at my last place so I thought I would try to find work in London…’ Rose was telling as much of the truth as she dare and she saw Peggy Ashley frown, because she’d sensed the lie behind the truth.

  ‘Well, Rose, I’m in a bit of bother at the moment. My
daughter Janet has taken her young daughter Maggie to live with a friend of hers in Devon for a while; her husband Mike died of his war wounds and it was awful for her. Janet helped me out when she felt up to it and my friend Helen has been working in the kitchen and the bar, but she just found work as a secretary and that leaves me with rather a lot to do… so I’ll give you a try and we’ll see if you settle here. You can have Helen’s old room now she’s gone…’ Peggy was looking at the suitcase. ‘Unless you’ve got somewhere to live?’

  Relief flooded through Rose, because she felt unable to search further and didn’t know where to go next. ‘I couldn’t afford it until I found work.’

  ‘Well, you may as well live in until you find your feet or want to move on,’ Peggy said. ‘Bring that suitcase and I’ll show you – and then I’m afraid I’m going to put you to work, but I shall give you a cup of tea and something to eat first…’

  Rose smiled and nodded, feeling nervous. Peggy was friendly and it looked as if Rose had been lucky, but if her new employer ever discovered the truth it would probably all go sour. The best she could do was to work hard and hope that Peggy would forgive her if she ever realised just who Rose was…

  *

  Peggy watched the girl tackle the load of washing-up waiting in the large butler sink. She could tell by the way Rose rinsed the glasses in cold water after washing them that she’d done this sort of work before and thought that perhaps she’d been lucky. Peggy sensed that her new helper was basically honest, though she was obviously hiding something, but most people had secrets and she was desperate enough to take a chance on her.

  The previous summer of 1943, Janet had decided to go and stay with her friend Rosemary in Devon, the widow of Mike’s commander, she had two sons to bring up alone and she and Janet seemed to understand each other’s feelings. After months of endless black despair over her husband’s cruel death, Janet had decided she could not go on living in the place where he had died.

  Peggy understood her daughter’s terrible grief. Mike had seemed to be so much better, before suddenly dying in his sleep at Janet’s side, and that had dealt her a hard blow. Peggy had heard her daughter weeping night after night and knew that Janet was bitter and angry – even with those she loved. The only person she seemed to want was Maggie, who would be four that March, her birthday a few days earlier than Peggy’s twins. The little girl clung fearfully to her mother’s skirts, and their grief was hard to watch so in a way it had been a relief when Janet had taken the child and left.

  ‘I need to get away, Mum,’ she’d said and her eyes had begged for understanding. ‘I just can’t bear to go on every day knowing that Mike died here in this house, in my bed. Losing him for a second time was too much to bear…’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Peggy had replied, but of course she couldn’t know really what that felt like and the accusation in Janet’s eyes cut her to the heart.

  For some three years now, Peggy had been estranged from her husband Laurie, with whom she’d previously spent years running this pub. He’d had an affair while away working on some hush-hush war thing he couldn’t tell her about and Peggy had fallen in love with a young American officer, Able Ronoscki, in England on liaison work. Able had been reported dead more than two years before when his plane had been lost in foggy weather over the sea; Peggy hadn’t even realised she was carrying his babies when he went missing. It had hurt Peggy terribly, and her grief had never left her, but it wasn’t like having your husband back, only to wake and find him lying dead beside you in bed, and the twins had given her hope for the future, because they were his. Janet had been hysterical with grief after waking beside her dead husband.

  Peggy had wanted to comfort Janet, to give her back the happiness she’d known for such a short time as Mike seemed to be regaining his life, coming back from the dark pit of forgetfulness that his severe wounds had cast him into. Perhaps the tiny shred of metal in his brain had moved, easing pressure on one part of his brain but then causing his death. The doctors hadn’t been able to explain it, only to say that because it was there and embedded too deep for removal it was always going to cause trouble – but that didn’t ease Janet’s pain nor did it erase the questions they all needed answered.

  Why had a cruel fate given Janet back her husband only to take him again?

  Peggy had agreed at once when Janet told her what she wanted to do.

  ‘I know it puts you in difficulty… with the twins and the pub to run…’ Janet had apologised, ‘but I can’t bear to be here, Mum.’

  ‘Helen will help me until she finds a job – and I’ve always got Nellie. She never lets me down and I can take on some part-time help. Maureen and Anne will come in when they can…’ Maureen and Anne were Peggy’s long-standing friends and they all helped each other in times of trouble.

  Janet had accepted her mother’s assurances, because Nellie had been like part of the family for years, and so she’d taken her clothes and her daughter and caught the next train. Her eagerness to leave had hurt Peggy, but she knew that because Rosemary had also lost her husband in the same sinking that fatal night when Mike was injured, she would be able to share Janet’s grief – and perhaps it was what Janet needed, her friends rather than her family around her. Her letters in the intervening months seemed to suggest she was happier there and although she’d sent cards and presents she hadn’t come home for Christmas. Peggy missed her daughter but seeing the excitement and happy faces of the twins opening their gifts had made it easier for her.

  ‘I can’t face it yet,’ she’d told Peggy when she phoned to wish her Happy Christmas.

  Helen had left the pub soon after Christmas 1943. She’d completed her training and wanted to live nearer her new job, which was as a secretary in a Government department in the city.

  ‘I’ll never forget your kindness, Peggy,’ she’d said. ‘I hope my leaving doesn’t make things too awkward for you…’

  ‘No, of course not, Helen. This was just a refuge for you – I’m happy for you to move on if you’re ready.’ Helen was the mother of one of Maureen Hart’s friends; her daughter had perished in the early Blitz and she’d come seeking sanctuary when she could no longer bear to live with her cold husband.

  Helen’s husband had never come after her. Whether it was because he had no idea where his wife had gone or more due to his pride that would not allow him to chase after a reluctant wife, they neither knew nor cared. Helen had done her bit while she stayed at the pub and then she’d decided to move on.

  Peggy wished she’d waited a bit longer to move out, because her efforts to find a new helper had not prospered. One young girl had come for three days and then complained the work was worse than the factory and returned to her old job. So Peggy had managed with help from her friends, but it hadn’t been easy with growing twins, who were born in the spring of 1942 and would have their second birthday later that year. In fact, she’d decided to dispense with her annual Christmas party the previous year, asking just a few of her closest friends to celebrate with her on the day itself.

  After Janet left, Peggy had employed an elderly man called Fred Dunby to help with the barrels on a temporary basis, but he’d succumbed to a nasty chill back in November the previous year and hadn’t been in for weeks, and of course Fred was no help with the children at all. Alice, from across the road, did a bit of baby-minding sometimes, and Peggy had found various women to help with the washing-up, but they came and went and there was no one she could really trust to help with the pub and the children. Of course the wages Peggy paid couldn’t compare with the wages paid in the munitions factories, most of which had now been moved out of London to secluded areas in the country so that accidents in the workplace would cause fewer casualties in the surrounding district. Rose turning up out of the blue was a stroke of luck.

  She was clearly used to hard work and she seemed pleasant enough, but she had to learn Peggy’s ways so they could work comfortably together.

  Peggy sighed, because although
she was managing to keep on top of most things, she missed her daughter and Helen too. Helen had promised to visit when she could and Peggy hoped she would, because they’d become friends. Peggy was feeling low and in need of something to cheer her. She fiddled with the radio, which was on the blink again, thinking about the marvellous new pocket-sized radios they were promising for after the war. So much was promised for after the war. If the end ever came. Thankfully, the Germans had turned their attention elsewhere after devastating London and the attacks had been spasmodic since then, though the papers warned of evil weapons preparing to wreak havoc on them again. Yet at the moment it was Berlin who was suffering as the Allies rained bombs on them, and the war seemed to be going their way as the USA launched the world’s biggest warship. Peggy just wished it would be over and they could all start to live again without fear of those they loved dying violently.

  A tap at her back door made her look round.

  ‘Peggy… I just popped in to say I can work in the bar this evening if you want me?’

  Anne Ross poked her head round the door and Peggy smiled at her friend, immediately feeling better. ‘Lovely, thanks so much, Anne. Come and meet Rose – she’s my new helper. Rose, this is my friend Anne Ross. Her husband is in the Army and she is a school teacher…’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Rose,’ Anne said, looking at her frankly. ‘Peggy really needs some help. I hope you will be happy here.’ She turned back to Peggy and once again she was smiling, happiness bubbling out of her. ‘I’ve just heard from Kirk. He’s coming home next week on a month’s leave and then he’ll be working and training here in England for a few months…’

  ‘Oh, Anne, that is wonderful news,’ Peggy cried, because Anne had hardly seen her husband since they were married. He’d been posted somewhere abroad and even his letters had been infrequent. It was no wonder that Anne looked so happy. ‘I’m so pleased for you. Where will you stay – at his uncle’s?’ Kirk’s uncle had a cobbler’s shop next door but one to the pub and it was there that they’d met.