A New Beginning
by Gwen Kirkwood
originally published by D C Thomson and by Chivers Large Print
as Shattered Dreams nder the pseudonym Lynn Granger
Smashwords edition 2011
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part in any manner without written permission of the publisher
http://www.gwenkirkwood.co.uk.
All names, characters and incidents mentioned in this novel are fictitious and any resemblance to any persons living or dead are coincidental.
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A New Beginning by Gwen Kirkwood
Chapter One
Roni had missed her turn again. She had hung back deliberately. All the old dread surfaced. The mere thought of sitting in a classroom again filled her with apprehension. They were called lecture rooms, here at the College of Further Education, but what difference would a name make? Her fellow students would laugh as they had done at school, or maybe snigger behind their hands. She shuddered. She half rose as panic gripped her.
`You’ve far too much imagination, my lassie!` She could almost hear her grandmother’s voice, brisk but always kindly. `People are far too busy with their own affairs to pay attention to yours - or they should be if they’ve any sense.`
The large hall was beginning to empty. The young man next to her left his seat and headed for the table marked "Basic Accounts - Stage 1". She clenched her fists, feeling them clammy with nerves. Why had she allowed herself to be persuaded?
Mrs Boyd from the Enterprise Office had said she would need a set of accounts and a cash flow if she wanted financial assistance to comply with the hygiene regulations and the addition of a tea-room to her little market garden.
`Next please.` The lecturer sounded weary and Roni’s heart sank, but she made her leaden limbs move to his table.
`You do want to study accounts?` Joseph Cole asked with a frown.
`Oh yes! Well, at least... I mean...`
`You mean your parents are pushing you into it?` Joseph suggested dryly. He pushed his fingers through his thinning hair. He knew his personal anxiety was draining him of his usual enthusiasm and energy. He was used to reluctant students in his day-time classes. Inspiring them had always been a challenge he had enjoyed. He had expected the students who attended evening classes would supply their own motivation. He looked at the girl’s bowed head.
`Sometimes parents can be wrong to...`
`It’s not that. I haven’t any parents.` Her voice was low but without self-pity, or resentment. `I need to understand how to keep accounts - just simple ones. Please...?`
There was a note of desperation in her voice now, a plea in the troubled brown eyes staring earnestly at him across the table.
`If you have the desire to learn that is more than half the battle. Tonight’s enrolment is for Basic Accounts. I’m sure you will have no difficulty with that.`
`Oh but... but you don’t understand.`
`There’s no need to be nervous,` Joseph said kindly. `Here is the registration form.` He turned it towards her and pushed it across the table. `Just read the questions and fill in your name and address and the relevant details.`
Roni bit her lip and pulled the form closer, studying it intently, reading slowly. Painstakingly she filled in her name and then her address. Her date of birth came next. So far so good. Her brow creased anxiously as she read through a long paragraph of closely typed information.
Joseph stole a glance at his wrist watch. He had promised Ruth he would get home as quickly as he could. He looked across at the girl’s lowered head and wondered what was taking her so long. She was quite different to most of the other young women he had seen milling around the registration hall. Her face had a clean, newly scrubbed look instead of the layers of make-up and mascara which seemed to be mandatory from the age of eleven upwards. His gaze moved back to the form. Her fingers were clenched tensely on the edge of the table and his eyes widened at the sight of her chipped and broken nails. Her hands were completely at variance with the baby soft bloom on her rounded cheeks. Beneath the electric lights her mane of hair gleamed more copper than brown. It was drawn back into a thick French pleat but the severe style suited her. She had not filled in any of the other boxes. He frowned, remembering his promise and the urgent need to hurry home to his wife and son.
`I’m afraid I must ask you to hurry now, Miss...` He squinted at the form and read her name upside down. `Miss Veronica Kennedy.`
`I-I could you…?` Roni flushed with embarrassment. `W-would you fill it in for me. Please?`
Joseph opened his mouth to protest then decided it would probably be quicker to do as she asked. Besides he found the plea in her brown eyes hard to resist. She reminded him of the Spaniel they had bought for Simon’s sixth birthday. What a happy day that had been. It seemed a whole lifetime ago instead of twenty years.
Swiftly he spun the sheet of paper towards him and scanned the questions, reading them aloud, filling in the boxes almost before Roni supplied the answers. He had almost finished. His head jerked up in surprise.
`What? No other qualifications? None at all?`
`N-no.` She stammered and felt the blood stain her cheeks, burning her up with shame. `I-I tried. I really did...b-but I-I…` Suddenly the words came pouring out in a rush. `I-I think… well one of my teachers thought I might be dyslexic.` Her face lost some of its tension as she remembered Mr Ling, the art teacher. He was the only one who had shown her patience and understanding and tried to help.
`I see. The school did not suggest any special help?`
`No, but I was ready to leave by then.`
`It is nearly four years since you left school. You must have been barely sixteen?` Joseph looked up from the particulars in front of him.
`Yes, Granny... that is my grandmother was dying. I wanted to leave school. Grandfather needed me. I helped him in the gardens you see and I did the cooking - the things Granny had always done...` Her eyes met Joseph’s. His gaze was shrewd, but kindly. `I wanted to leave school. I never liked it,` she added with a burst of honesty. `In fact I hated it.`
Joseph nodded.
`And your parents? Did they think you should leave school to look after your grandfather?`
`I told you. My parents are dead.`
`Both of them?’ Joseph was used to some pupils telling fabricated family histories to gain attention. Roni nodded. `I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry...`
`That’s all right. They were killed in an air crash when I was nine months old so I never knew them.` The large hall was empty now, except for another lecturer standing by his table. `I must go. Thank you. Good-night.`
Joseph watched her hurry to the other end of the long hall, her long legs carrying her swiftly away from him. She moved with a natural grace, no provocative wiggle of the hips, no self conscious shuffling. He frowned as he gathered up his papers and stuffed them into his briefcase. The girl puzzled him, she looked intelligent and she had nice manners. She had a lovely smile, faintly sad maybe, but there was nothing sullen or resentful in her demeanour.
`Will you join us for a drink at The Crown before you go home, Joe?` The invitation from one of his fellow lecturers echoed across the empty hall.
`Thanks, Andy, but not tonight. I promised Ruth I wouldn’t be late.`
`Mmm… Simon still needing a lot of help is he?` There was sympathy and understanding in Andrew Woodward’s tone. The two chatted amiably as they gathered up their belongings.
`I’ll walk with you to your car.`
When Roni had arrived at the college the parking area had been crowded. In the fading light of the September evening she felt she had been lucky to find an empty space and she had edged her van into a gap between an estate car and the high brick wall which marked the boundary between the college car park and a housing estate. Now the sky was a deep purple and the lights near the college entrance cast a yellow glow over the few cars still parked in the area reserved for staff. Her own vehicle seemed miles away, lost and forlorn in deep shadow by the wall. She zipped up her anorak against the autumn chill and hurried across the uneven ground.
As she inserted the key in the lock she thought she heard hoarse whispers, but her mind was on the best way to manoeuvre the van away from the wall. `That’s strange,` she muttered, eyeing the lopsided angle. The van was almost touching the wall and she was sure she had not parked so closely. She was a good driver; she had to be with no money to spare for unnecessary repairs. She unlocked the van and reached for a torch. She groaned aloud when she saw the flat tyre.
Stifled laughter came from the other side of the wall. `Hey, it isn’t old Sparky! It’s a woman!`
Roni heard the sibilant whisper and frowned. As she walked round to the other side of the van the beam of her torch highlighted a tousled head and a clinging hands before they disappeared behind the high wall.
`You’re right, Jugs! It is a woman. We’ve picked the wrong yin, that canna be Sparky’s old banger.` There was an audible gasp.
In dismay Roni saw she had three flat tyres and she guessed the youths had done this deliberately. She felt like bursting into tears as the tensions of the day welled up inside her. This was the last straw but crying wouldn’t get her home. She had one spare tyre, but what use was that? She would have to telephone a garage and that would mean a hefty bill. But she had to get home and she needed the van tomorrow for her deliveries.
One of the few remaining cars revved up and drove rapidly away. Panic galvanised her into action. She would be left here alone, with only the vandals on the other side of the wall. She could hear them whispering together.
Then she saw Mr Cole push open the swing doors and come out onto the steps with another man who was lighting a pipe. She hadn’t known of Joseph Cole’s existence until this evening but now he was the only familiar figure in this alien place. She sprinted up the deserted car park, waving her torch to attract his attention, afraid that he might drive away before she reached him.
`Is - is there a public telephone I could use?` she gasped, reaching him as he slid into the seat of his own car. Joseph looked up, recognising her as the last student to register, but his mind was on his wife and son.
`It’s just along the second corridor.`
`You’ll have to be quick. The janitor will be locking up,` Andrew Woodward remarked laconically, glancing up from his pipe.
`Thank-you. You don’t know the number of the nearest garage do you?` she asked hopefully.
`Garage?` The pipe paused in mid-air. `Run out of petrol have you?`
`No I have not.` Indignation and frustration banished Roni’s desire to sit down and howl her head off. `Someone has let the air out of three of my tyres. I think they may have damaged the valves. There’s some boys hiding behind that wall. I heard them and I’m sure they did it deliberately.` Try as she would her voice wobbled.
`Oh dear...` Joseph frowned and peered across the empty car park. `Well you have left it in a rather deserted spot.`
`It wasn’t deserted when I arrived. There was no room at all.`
`No, no probably not. It’s getting late now.` Automatically he switched on the lights. Suddenly the full beam streamed across the park illuminating the head and shoulders of three people before they disappeared behind the wall.
`That was Jon Goodsby!` Andrew exclaimed.
`You know them?`
`One of them for sure. He’s a student. First year mechanics. They call him Jugs because he has such protruding ears.`
`I heard someone say Jugs. It doesn’t mend my tyres though. I must phone...`
`I pass the garage on my way home,` Joseph said, stifling a sigh. `I could drop you off.`
`Most of the garages will be closed by now,` Andrew Woodward said. `It’s too bad of those young hooligans. We could ask Jim Sparks if he would supervise some of his lads while they repair the damage tomorrow. He believes in giving them hands-on experience...`
`B-but I need my van to get home,` Roni protested. `I need it tomorrow afternoon for deliveries.`
`Couldn’t you catch a bus tonight and come back for your van tomorrow? It would be a lot cheaper than calling out the garage.`
`We don’t have service buses at Bellingdale.`
`I live in that direction,` Joseph said resignedly. `at Glendocken. I’ll give you a lift, but I must call in at my home on the way and explain what has happened.`
Roni hesitated. Her van was vital for delivering the vegetable orders and she hated to be a nuisance to this weary looking man, but it would take her forever to battle her way through the telephone directory. The lists of names and numbers confounded her.
`I don’t have time to wait and I assure you it would be far better than roaming around the streets of Elldarwood on your own.` Joseph said wryly, misinterpreting Roni’s anxious expression.
`It- it’s not that,` she stammered. `I really do need my van tomorrow. I grow vegetables and deliver them. I - I knew I should never have come.` Her voice wavered.
`I’ll have a word with Mr Sparky first thing tomorrow,` Andrew Woodward promised, holding the door open for her. `We’ll have it back to you by lunch time.`
`Thank you. I’m sorry to be such a nuisance,` she added miserably.
`It’s those young vandals who are a nuisance,` Andrew Woodward said grimly.
Roni glanced at the profile of Mr Cole in the dim light from the dashboard. He looked tense and drawn.
`Soon be there now,` Joseph Cole said quietly, as the car turned a sharp corner into the village of Glendocken. He drove into a small crescent of four detached houses and through wrought iron gates. A light came on illuminating a curving flagged patio in front of a double garage with painted green doors.
`I’ll just tell my wife what has happened then I’ll run you home.` Joseph Cole was out of the car and striding to a side door before Roni could nod her head.
He had barely finished explaining about the vandals before Ruth’s concern was aroused. She had been feeling near the end of her tether and ready to blow up at her beloved husband, but the sight of his drawn face and tired eyes stilled her tongue.
`You look all in, Joe. There’s plenty of food for one extra. Perhaps the girl could join us?`
`Are you sure? I’m certainly ready for....`
`If you’re bringing some strange female in here I’m going to my room!` Ruth and Joseph turned to face their son, sitting bolt upright in his wheel chair.
`But, Simon... You haven’t eaten either.`
`I’ve no intention of eating with a gaping stranger, just because father sees fit to drag her in off the streets. Have you forgotten this is my home?`
Ruth gazed helplessly at her son, dismayed at the bitterness in his voice, the grim set to his thin face.
`We have never forgotten this is your home, Simon, or that we are your parents. You have never allowed us to forget for a moment, since the day we brought you home from hospital six weeks ago. The girl waiting out there doesn’t even have parents...`
`Left her on the steps of an orphanage, did they?`
Joseph stared at his only son. Could this possibly be the same person who had worked so hard to help the underprivileged lads in Glasgow? He shook his head in despair.
`Oh dear. He’s been argumentative and bad tempered all day,` Ruth said softly.
`Don’t speak about me as though I’m not here.` Simon snapped. `Or as though I’m deaf, dumb and wrong in the head - as well as crippled.`
`The son we knew and loved is not here.` Joseph spoke quietly but there was a thread of steel in his voice which even Ruth had never heard before. She glanced at him anxiously, but he went on grimly. `I shall invite Miss Kennedy in to share our meal. If you refuse to join us you can go to bed hungry.`
`I’ll have mine in by room...`
`You eat with us, or not at all.`
`Stop treating me like a child!`
`Then stop acting like one.` Joseph turned on his heel and strode to the door.
`Joe...` Ruth laid a tentative hand his arm. `Perhaps it was not a good idea...` Her eyes were pleading, her face strained and tired. Joseph raised a finger and drew it gently down her cheek, allowing it to rest briefly at her mouth. How drained she looked.
`Enough is enough,` he said firmly. `I think you’ll like Miss Kennedy. She’s your kind of girl.`
Ruth blinked at his retreating back. What was her kind of girl? A blue stocking studying accountancy? A girl bent on a successful career? She turned to face her son and found him with his head slumped in his hands. Her heart twisted at the sight of his utter dejection.
`Oh, Simon.` She stroked the spiky hair which had once been so thick and wavy. Slowly it was beginning to cover the scars from the operation. `Your father didn’t mean to be harsh. You know how much we both love you...`
`I don’t see how you can love me. I hate myself - but I can’t help it, Mother. I feel so - so bloody useless! It would have been better if they’d left me to die.`
`Don’t say that. Things will improve,` Ruth soothed softly.
Neither of them had heard the door open. Roni hesitated on the threshold and Joseph paused too. To an outsider looking in it was a cosy lamp lit room, the picture of a loving mother comforting a son in pain or distress. Just for a moment Roni felt a stab of envy. This was all so different from the Lodge which was her own home - dark and empty now. Once it had been full of loving kindness too.
She knew nothing of the tensions and storms which threatened the lives of the three people who were watching her with varying expressions of welcome, surprise - and was it resentment she saw in the grey eyes of the young man in the wheelchair? But why should he resent her? He didn’t even know her.
Chapter Two
Roni made an effort to respond to Mrs Cole’s efforts at conversation but her admiration of her home was sincere so she was unprepared for Simon Cole’s contemptuous snort.
`A lovely room. A delicious pie. Making sure you’ll be invited back, are you?` Roni’s cheeks flushed. Ruth caught her breath in dismay while Joseph stared at his son in angry disbelief.
`I am speaking the truth,` Roni answered quietly but her eyes flashed as they met and held the bitter grey gaze of the young man glaring at her across the table. `You may think you are the only one with problems, but this was an awful day for me too. Finding three flat tyres on my van seemed like the last straw. I am grateful for your father’s offer of a lift, and your mother’s invitation to share your meal.` She waved a hand, indicating the well furnished room, the obvious quality of the thick carpet and toning velvet curtains which reached down to the floor, the wide marble fire place where flames danced and flickered merrily, in addition to the warmth from the radiator at the back of her chair. `No doubt you take all this comfort for granted if you have had it all your life. To me it does look lovely. What is so wrong about saying so?`
Simon’s only response was a cynical humph, but Roni was tired and tense and her patience was evaporating by the second. She had spent a day filled with doubts and dread.
`My grandparents could not provide the luxury of a home like yours, but they gave me all the love I needed and taught me good manners,` Roni said angrily, `enough manners never to angle for an invitation - especially when it is clear I am not welcome.` She stood up, unaware that anger and indignation had added golden sparks to her brown eyes, or that the colour which flared on her cheeks added to her attraction.
`Oh, please! My dear, Ruth Cole protested. `I can only apologise for Simon’s childish behaviour.`
Roni hesitated, glancing at the mocking face across the table. She badly wanted to escape but she was dependent on Mr Cole to drive her home. She glanced at him. He looked dreadfully tired. He met her glance.
`We have not had coffee yet. I really would like a cup, before we drive on to Bellingdale.`
`Of course,’ Roni nodded apologetically and subsided onto her chair.. `It was thoughtless of me.`
`I’ll bring it right now,` Ruth Cole said with relief. `And Simon, do remember it is not Roni’s fault that you’ve spent the past few months in a wheelchair.`
`You have not been in a wheel chair all your life then?` Roni asked.
`What difference does that make? I’m in one now and...`
`But not forever, Simon,` Joseph Cole interrupted firmly. `The surgeon said there was a good chance you would learn to walk again if they could save your other leg and they do seem more hopeful now. Once your injuries have healed enough for you to be fitted with an artificial limb you will soon...`
`Make a fine Long John Silver to go lurching along the street for all the young hooligans to laugh at.`
`You spent most of your free time befriending and helping `young hooligans,’ as you call them! Why should you expect them to mock you? Once you get out and about again you will...`
`I’ll stay where I am.` Simon gave a visible shudder. Just for an instant Roni glimpsed a terrible anguish in his grey eyes. The hollows and planes of his thin face seemed filled with despair and bewilderment. Then he turned sharply away towards the kitchen, willing his mother to hurry back with the coffee and end his evening’s ordeal. Roni was equally relieved when Mrs Cole returned with the tray of coffee.
`Sorry. I’m afraid it is a bit crowded in here,` she smiled ruefully as she squeezed past Roni’s chair.
`You don’t need to apologise on my account,’ she smiled `When my grandmother had a stroke we made a bed for her in the living-room and it is tiny compared with this. She liked to be with us so that she could see what was going on. Granny was so thankful just to be at home.`
`I’m sure she was, my dear...`
`Unlike me, I suppose!` Simon muttered.
`Don’t look for criticism where none is meant,` his mother chided. `I was merely...`
`Making polite conversation?`
`I-I think it is time I went home,` Roni said uncomfortably. `That is unless I can help you wash the dishes?`
`Yes dear, I would like that.` Ruth Cole, smiled at her. `It will give Joseph five minutes with his newspaper and it’s not often I get an offer of help in the kitchen.`
`My fault again, of course!` Simon growled.