ROSIE’S BAD NIGHT

A child is disturbed by silence in the earlu night...

ROSIE’S BAD NIGHT

When she was eight Rosie was in bed and she knew that something was very wrong in the house.

For starters, it was silent downstairs, and that was never the case. Something unusual had woken her, maybe something from outside. And in addition a clock boomed every fifteen minutes, Westminster chimes from the wall in the front room, and she hadn’t heard that for ages. Then there was the normal clatter of things in the kitchen. Mum was always in the kitchen, clattering pots, banging cutlery as if to tell dad he was a lazy devil not helping her. And finally she couldn’t hear the whisper of that dad snoring in his chair after a long hard day in the factory, as he put it. None of the normal noises of the evening made it up stairs to Rosie in her bed, and it troubled her.

In the end she could stand it no longer, and she tip-toed down the stairs to investigate. Dressed only in her best cotton nightie the cool of the night didn’t touch her, but then it shouldn’t, because the cool wasn’t cool at all but nice and warm.

Too warm? Was it too warm? No, never.

As she took every step she could almost hear the swish as the hem of her nightie rubbed against the stairs, and that sort of comforted her.

But what was that? Was someone crying, so gently that she could almost not hear it, a weeping noise that sniffed audibly every so often.

In bed, she’d been scared by the lack of the usual sounds from downstairs, but now a frisson of fear added to it. And she was only eight.

Stepping off the bottom step, she made her way to the front room door, the door to the room where dad usually slept and snored, and she pushed it and it squeaked faintly open Dad had said something about oiling the hinges day after day but had never done it. He oiled enough things in the factory for him not to want to oil the hinges of the doors at home, he growled! The same with lots of other jobs that needed doing, but weren’t to his liking. Doing them was too much like being at work, and he hated being there.

She peered into the room, trying to stay out of sight in case her presence alarmed her parents.

Mum was there all right, not on the kitchen but in the front room, and she was lying on the floor with a dark sticky pool of something nasty stretching from a gash on her head.

“Rosie! Stay out there!” called her dad, “you mustn’t see this, darling.”

He always called her darling, so that was all right.

“But mum…?” she asked.

Before he could answer there was a peremptory knock on the door, the front door right next to where she was standing half in and half out of the front room, and the knock came again.

She switched the light on and went to open the door.

“It’s all right, darling,” called her dad, and she could see that the weeping she had heard had actually come from him. And dad never cried, men don’t, do they? At least, in her world they didn’t. Then: “it’ll be a policeman,” he added, sounding sort of nervously hopeful.

So she pulled the door open, and a policewoman was standing there. Her face was dark with lovely brown skin and the shadows of evening made her look a little darker.

“Was it your father who rang, dear?” she asked in the sort of voice that filled Rosie with confidence. Here was someone who would mend mum and put everything right. If mum was broken, that is. So she indicated the room she was half-in herself, and the policewoman, without pushing or being in any way bossy like some policemen can be, walked past her and into the room.

When she saw Rosie’s mum lying on the floor she raised her eyes and spoke to her dad.

“I think she’s dead,” he said, “the light of my life has gone out…”

From outside came the sound of an ambulance blaring out its blues and twos. The scary blue light from it flashed through the window where the curtains didn’t quite meet and flickered on the white ceiling.

“Let me look,” said the policewoman, and she turned for a moment towards Rosie.

“I tell you what,” she said, “can you go to your room, just for a minute or two, while the grown ups do grown-up things?”

“I want my mummy,” whispered Rosie, but the policewoman represented authority and she had been taught to respect authority. So slowly, she backed to the stairs, and made her way up them, and reached her own bedroom and jumped onto her bed.

It was time for her to cry, so she did.

Downstairs, the policewoman faced her dad and shook her head slowly.

“What was it?” she asked, “a quarrel? A fight?”

“It’s my fault…” his voice faltered quietly, but when she stopped crying Rosie could just about make it out, not the words so much as the comforting rumble it made.

“Maybe if you told me?” said Sergeant Holly, the policewoman, “what happened, I mean?”

Upstairs Rosie could hear the Sergeant’s voice and it was sort of comforting, filled with understanding and sympathy.

Dad, though, started crying like dads don’t.

“She’s been getting on to me for ages,” he wept, “about that clock and the way it was loose on the wall… I kept promising, but…”

Sergeant Holly went to the door when the paramedics knocked, and let them in.

“She must have gone to wind it. I usually do that, but I must have been dozing off in my chair… it’s been a hard day at work…”

“She’ll be all right with a bit of luck,” one of the paramedics said comfortingly loud so that Roaie could just about make out what he said.

“I’ll fix all the things that need fixing…” wept dad, I know I should have done them but…”

“She was trying to do it herself,” pointed out sergeant Holly, indicating the screwdriver she was still holding in her hand, “probably, like a busy woman might, turned the screw th wrong way?”

“Dunno,” muttered dad, “she’s still alive, you say?”

The paramedic reassuringly smiled at him. “A good strong pulse,” he said, “and though the head injury may be a problem, I’m hopeful.”

“Good then,” muttered Rosie’s dad.

“The best laid plans…” suggested Sergeant Holly. “You’d best clear that blood away before your little gitl comes down,” she added, “and we’ll pop in tomorrow to see how things are…”

“You will?” he asked, paling.

“Well, it’s not like a lady to turn a screwdriver the wrong way, is it?” smiled the sergeant as she followed the paramedics out of the house.

Upstairs and lying on her bed, Holly heard that and knew that mummy would never do such a silly thing. Even at eight she knew that.

She clambered off her bed and locked her bedroom door.

“Better to be safe than sorry,” she whispered to herself.

© Peter Rogerson 21.08.22

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