Extract from The Golden Road
Chapter 1
- Josie Shaw, feeling desperately large and awkward in her new black clothes, stood dutifully beside her diminutive mother and scowled at the assembled mourners. How could they look so cheerful, even laugh out loud, when they had just attended the burial of her stepfather, one of the kindest, most generous of men? Even her mother had thrown back the ostentatiously heavy veils she'd worn at the church over her fair hair, and though she clutched a black lace handkerchief in her hand, her eyes were dry and she was talking volubly.
Josie glared round. She wished they'd all go away. Then she saw
one man who wasn't enjoying the funeral feast. Leo Bradley stood
alone, black hair overlong and untidy, as it had always been when
she'd seen him as a boy. But he was far more handsome now, his good
looks and clean-cut profile were the first thing you noticed about
him. He held a glass of sherry but seemed oblivious to everything but
his own thoughts. His deepset eyes were shaded, his square jaw jutted
pugnaciously, his attention was clearly far away. The mourners
tactfully sidestepped his tall, broad figure, leaving around him a
barrier of space as unscaleable as a high wall. After all, it was his
father they had buried and Leo, she'd been told, though only twelve
at the time, had quarrelled bitterly with his father when George
Bradley had married the recently widowed Dora Shaw. He'd never
accepted them, never visited them willingly despite George's urging.
Leo suddenly became aware of Josie's gaze, and stared at her in
some surprise. It was a year since they'd met, when she'd been a
leggy, gangling schoolgirl who, he'd thought, ought to have been a
boy, she was so vital and strong. Joseph Shaw must have been a big
man, like George. Josie was quite unlike her delicate mother, tall
and with strong features that had softened into a different kind of
beauty from Dora's Dresden shepherdess fragility. Black suited her,
with her pale skin, green eyes and vivid auburn hair, while it made
Dora look ill, even haggard. He raised one eyebrow slightly and
inclined his head, then slipped through a doorway into the lushly
overgrown conservatory. Two minutes later Josie entered from the
garden.
- 'I – wanted to say how sorry I am,' she said softly. 'I loved Papa George very much.'
- 'He thought of you as his own daughter,' Leo said curtly. 'You probably knew him better than I did.'
- Josie glanced at him curiously. So he still resented his father's second marriage. 'Did you feel I'd pushed you out?' she asked bluntly.
- 'I never blamed you. You were only a baby. Two, weren't you? Josie, let's walk in the garden. It's so hot in here, and I'd appreciate it – if you feel you can talk about it – if you could tell me how it happened. You were there, they said, but I wasn't told much else.'
- She led the way across the smoothly mown grass and through an opening in the yew hedge. This surrounded a formally planted rose-garden, and the rich scent filled the hot, still air. 'It was dreadful. I was on the opposite hill, and I saw it, but I – there was nothing I could do!'
- 'Sit down.' Leo pushed her towards an ornately carved bench and sat beside her. 'You don't have to tell me, not if it upsets you.'
- 'No, I'd like to tell you. Mother couldn't bear to listen. I haven't told anyone yet. They didn't want to upset me, they said.' She paused and gathered her thoughts. 'Mother wasn't in the best of moods. She had been saying that she wanted to go to the French Riviera, but we couldn't afford it. The weather had brought on a headache. Papa George went out for a breath of fresh air, he said. It was terribly hot, like today. I'd hoped he would take me with him and teach me more about driving, but he'd gone by the time I'd helped Mother to bed, so I decided to climb up the hill behind the house. Do you know Church Stretton? It's all hills. It was so peaceful, the woods, and fields with ripe corn, and animals grazing. I was looking at all the timbered buildings, and wishing I could walk in the Welsh hills. There was a train coming, I could see the smoke and hear it chugging, but it was so far away I could still hear the skylarks and the bees. I was so happy on my own. I was planning what I'd do when I left school. Women can do all sorts of things now. We have the vote at twenty-one. There's even been a woman Cabinet Minister. I want a career, not to be like my mother, just dependent on a man.'
- For the first time Leo smiled. 'Did my father bring you up a suffragette?'
- Josie glanced at him and shook her head. A single tear glistened on her surprisingly dark eyelashes. 'No, but he understood,' she said with a slight quaver in her voice. 'He talked to me about important things – the Nazis in Germany, and the General Strike a few years ago, and India becoming a Dominion, as well as the new television experiments the BBC is working on. But he didn't talk to me about why Wall Street is so important.'
- 'I expect he thought you wouldn't understand about the stock market.'
- 'I can't understand why people trust others to make their money for them like Papa George did rather than opening their own business.'
- 'It's called investment.'
- 'I'll work for my money when I have a business. I won't depend on anyone else and risk being let down by them.'
- 'Women don't have businesses. They're better off at home.'
- 'Oh, come on, Leo. It's 1930, not 1830. Women run shops, can become doctors now, they even fly aeroplanes! I won't depend on a man like my mother did! It's not done her much good.'
- Her voice wavered and Leo stretched out and took her hand in his. 'Stop if it upsets you.'
- Josie gritted her teeth. 'No, I want to tell you. I heard a car, an odd, high-pitched tone which didn't seem normal. Yet the engine noise was familiar. Bentleys have a distinctive whine. He loved that car. Even when he lost so much money he wouldn't sell it. It was on the hill opposite, coming down a very narrow steep road and it was travelling fast, much too fast. It was coasting out of gear; that was the odd sound. Something must have gone wrong.' She shuddered, reliving those terrifying moments, and Leo hugged her comfortingly. Josie took a deep breath. 'He didn't have a chance! The car smashed into a stone wall. It was thrown into the air and landed upside down on some rocks. It burst into flames and just fell apart. They said - they said he was dead or unconscious before the fire. I hope so! Leo, I do hope so!'
- © 1996 Marina Oliver
