The Untrodden Snow

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Rowan's flight to Switzerland to start a new life coincides with the arrival of Ashley Moore, fresh from the success of a brilliant new musical show in London. Ashley is working on another musical in a chalet near the hotel where Rowan is working, and their paths seem to be constantly crossing - and meeting. It is not until Fran Cottar, the beautiful wife of Ashley's best friend, arrives on the scene and Rowan finds her in Ashley's arms that Rowan realises that for the first time in her life she is in love, passionately - and hopelessly.

Release date: March 27, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 192

Sample

IT was not until Rowan returned from the funeral and walked down the garden path of the little cottage in Jordans—the only home she had ever known—that the full realization of her loss descended upon her.

At the funeral, itself, she had been in too much of a daze to think. Everybody had been kind. The Vicar, who had conducted the burial service. The Doctor, who had been hurriedly called in when Mrs. Gray had her first heart attack. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins, whose cottage stood only a few hundred yards away from Rowan’s home. Ann Jenkins had been wonderful throughout. She was a nice woman with two children at school. Rowan and her widowed mother used to see a lot of the Jenkins family. Rowan was so good with children. Jeremy and Ingrid, the little Jenkins boy and girl, adored her. Rowan and her mother used to go in two evenings a week to see the Jenkins’ television. Thinking about the television was one of the things that struck Rowan like a blow as she stopped midway down the garden path to stare through a haze of tears at the roses which were just coming into bud. Mummy had had a passion for roses and theirs were always quite the best for miles around. They had actually been sitting together, looking at a Flower Show on the Jenkins’ television, and Mummy had been saying how she was going to try and show her roses this year at the Chelsea Flower Show, when the first terrible pain attacked her. Then the frantic rush for the doctor. Then, later, a second attack and before Rowan could even realize the enormity of it, death had struck Mary Gray down. Ended Mummy’s life just as swiftly and easily, Rowan pondered, as she could this moment end the life of the rose she was touching; by pulling off that bud.

Rowan ran into the cottage, shut the door and locked it, and flung herself down on the sofa in the sitting-room.

It was silent, dreadfully lonely and dim. The early summer sun had been shut out because Mrs. Jenkins had considered it right and proper to pull the curtains while the coffin left the house.

Rowan abandoned herself to the passionate grief which she had tried so hard to check during the funeral. She hated showing her feelings in public. But she felt the most bitter longing to have her mother back again. She had been so affectionate, so warm-hearted. Now all that warmth and sweetness was gone. She was lying out there in the churchyard under a mound of flowers—tributes from neighbours. The Grays were well known in Jordans but it had been remarked upon that not a single relative had come to the funeral and nobody ever remembered any relations calling at Beacon Cottage. What the district knew was all that Rowan herself knew about her family; that her father was dead and Mummy had brought her up from infancy here, in this little cottage. And that there had been enough money to keep the home going in a modest way, and to educate her. Rowan, as a child, went to a good school in Gerrards Cross. She could speak and write perfect French. Mary Gray had been born a Swiss and often conversed in that language with Rowan. A thing which had always rather mystified Rowan was the fact that her mother never spoke of her own childhood; or her Swiss relations.

“I’ve taken English nationality,” she used to say in her clear precise voice. “I would like you to learn to speak my mother tongue, but I have no wish to return to Switzerland, nor to take you there.”

Whatever the mystery attached to the past, it had never entered Rowan’s head to probe into it or question her mother further.

On her nineteenth birthday, a fortnight ago, plans for Rowan’s future had been discussed. It had always been Mrs. Gray’s wish that Rowan should be given the chance to make a career for herself. As the years went by, investments dwindled, money became more difficult and the cost of living had risen. Mrs. Gray must have been forty When Rowan was born. Rowan knew that. Mummy was by no means a ‘young mother’ and she was always worrying about what would happen to Rowan if anything happened to her.

“I simply must be able to feel that you can stand on your own feet,” Mrs. Gray had said that day, when they had talked things over, “when I go, you will have nobody in the world.”

“I think I’m the only person who hasn’t got any aunts or uncles or cousins,” Rowan had laughed; then seeing a shadow over her mother’s face, had quickly changed the subject. It was not one that Mummy ever wished to discuss. But Rowan went her way quite happily, doing her share of the cooking and the housework, and for the last year she had taken a secretarial course—going into High Wycombe every day by bus.

“With my shorthand, typing and one foreign language, I ought to be able to get a good secretarial job if I ever want one,” she had told her mother, more to stop her worrying than anything.

Then this—this sudden awful ending of their peaceful tranquil life together in Beacon Cottage.

Ann Jenkins had suggested coming in with Rowan just now but Rowan had asked her not to. She wanted to be quite alone. A deep reserve—amounting almost to shyness—and what Ann Jenkins thought almost an unnatural love of being alone—singled Rowan out from other girls of her own age. She had always been happy here in the cottage just with her mother and their few friends. She had never craved for excitement, parties, boy-friends—the usual interests of the teenager. Books, music, history in particular, interested the young girl. But now she began to see what it would mean to be absolutely alone.

It was a terrifying thought.

Death is a thing the young rarely think about. To them it is too remote. For Rowan, her mother’s death had come as a horror—a monster that had suddenly opened its jaws and devoured this dearest and nearest creature. She had found it hard to listen to the Christian comfort the Vicar tried to give her. Hers was the all-absorbing sorrow of a young and tender heart. She cried passionately for a long time on the sofa in the darkened sitting-room; not daring to look around, in case she saw the cretonne bag on the table in which there lay the embroidery on which her mother had been working; or any of the familiar objects which they had both loved and shared.

She felt something soft and warm against her foot, and a plaintive ‘mew’. She stopped crying for a moment, put out her hand and stroked the ears of Candy, Mummy’s tortoise-shell cat whom they had had for eight long years. Poor Candy would be wondering where her mistress was tonight. She would have to find Candy a home, Rowan thought miserably. Rowan was going over to stay with the Jenkins tonight, but she could not take Candy because there was a Boxer dog there who did not take kindly to cats.

“Oh, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?” Rowan uttered the words aloud in a voice strangled with grief.

Slowly coming out of her daze, she began to remember all kinds of things that worried her. Apart from Mummy’s sudden death—the question of money. Rowan had never had anything to do with the finance of this little household. She did not even know where Mummy’s income came from except that she used to go once a month into High Wycombe to visit her Bank Manager; and there always seemed enough to make ends meet, if no more. Tomorrow, Rowan would have to go in and see the Bank Manager, herself; find out how things stood. It was rather a frightening prospect to be nineteen—not yet even of age—and have to make a new life for oneself, she thought.

Of course now she must admit that she and Mummy had led a too solitary existence; that she, Rowan, had been too closely protected from the troubles and difficulties of the world. It would not be easy to face up to realities. Why, she didn’t even know if this cottage was actually Mummy’s—or mortgaged—or what. All these things she must find out tomorrow.

One thing she did know; that was that it wouldn’t be possible for her—a young girl—to live alone at Beacon Cottage. She knew nobody who could come and live with her; therefore, there loomed the awful idea of having to leave her home. Yes, sell up and leave; what a bleak, crippling prospect!

Into the young mind that had been so bemused during these last forty-eight hours, crept yet another thought; the uncomfortable and baffling memory of Mrs. Gray’s last harrowing moments before she died.

She had been helped back here from the Jenkins’ house after the first attack. The doctor had left her in bed seemingly better, quite calm after an injection. But the second and fatal attack had followed while Rowan was in the kitchen boiling eggs for their supper. She had rushed upstairs, seen the terrifyingly altered face of the beloved woman, cradled her in her young strong arms and listened to gasping words:

“Tin box … my diary … burn …” she kept saying with her piteous eyes fixed upon Rowan.

Rowan without understanding, had answered:

“All right, darling, all right, don’t worry.”

But Mary Gray’s last words on earth had been a reiteration:

“My diary … burn …”

It was only now in the silent cottage while the last rays of sunshine struggled through a chink in the drawn curtains and hurt Rowan’s swollen eyes, that she again remembered those words.

She stood up, blew her nose and walked to the little walnut bureau which stood by the window. She drew back the curtains and opened the casement windows wide. The tortoiseshell cat leapt up, and like an arch of orange fur, streaked on to the flowerbed below and vanished.

Rowan stood a moment staring at the bureau. It had always been sacrosanct to her mother; used expressly by her for writing letters or doing accounts. Rowan had her own desk up in her bedroom. Mummy used to be rather odd about this desk, which, for the most part she kept locked. As Rowan grew older, one day she had remarked on her mother’s secretiveness; her rather jealous appropriation of the bureau; and Mrs. Gray had received the jest without smiling. In fact, it was the only time that Rowan had ever seen her look angry.

“You must not pry. I must have my own private things, dear,” she had said in a cold voice.

Rowan stared fixedly at the desk, still trying to calm her sorrow and think coherently. What had been on poor Mummy’s mind as she felt the death pangs convulse her heart? A tin box—a diary—what did it all mean? Why must the diary be burnt?

‘I’ll see to it tomorrow,’ Rowan thought as she stood there, and she lifted her lashes which were long and sticky with tears and regarded her own face in the oval mirror which hung above the desk. A rather charming little French mirror with two candlesticks.

Rowan was quite shocked to see her reflection. Heavens! How awful she looked!

She was naturally pale but this was a white ghost of a girl. Her cheeks seemed to have sunk in the last three days since tragedy had torn up the roots of her tranquil life, as though by a cyclone. Her eyes which were large and dark, were as pitiful as those of a wounded deer. Her hair, which was extremely fair by contrast, was severely brushed back from her forehead and twisted into a bun. She was without colour. The funereal black of a hastily purchased and ill-fitting suit hid the natural grace of her young figure. She looked quite old, she thought; scrawny and plain.

What was this dreary girl going to do with her life? Once or twice, her mother had talked about her ‘meeting the right man’ and settling down to marriage and motherhood. It had not been a subject to cause Rowan much excitement.

“I don’t think I shall ever get married. I think I shall be an old maid and as I love children, I shall adopt a child,” she had laughed.

Her mother had given her rather an odd look and said curtly:

“Oh, you’ll fall in love one day. Every woman does.”

But Rowan, looking at herself in the mirror this afternoon, decided that there would be no falling in love for her. No man would ever want her. So far there had only been one vague suggestion of a ‘romance’ in her life. A boy of her own age at the secretarial school in High Wycombe and who lived at Jordans used to travel to and fro on the bus. They both liked music. This boy, Alan Spencer, took her into Slough to hear a concert. It had been quite an experience for Rowan, and Mummy had thought Alan nice and smiled upon the friendship, deeming it good for Rowan. But when Alan had tried a clumsy embrace—as shy and inexperienced as the object of his affections—Rowan had felt herself freeze. She did not want that sort of friendship. She never saw Alan again.

What was she going to do now?

A sudden quite inexplicable curiosity to open her mother’s desk rushed over her. Indeed she felt so intensely about it that she was quite shaken by the emotion. Was it a shameful curiosity or a natural one? She did not know. But even to open that bureau seemed an abuse of the trust that her mother had always had in her. In Mummy’s lifetime, Rowan had never dreamed of prying.

But now she would have to. She would have to learn more about the business side of things. On the way back from the churchyard, the kindly Mrs. Jenkins had murmured something about a Will and the necessity for a lawyer. Rowan had said that as far as she knew, her mother had never made a Will nor mentioned the name of a lawyer. She must once have had one if she bought the cottage but Rowan, then an infant, would know nothing about that.

‘How funny it is,’ Rowan reflected as she looked at her sad mirrored face. ‘My mother must have had a past—a beginning in Switzerland for instance, and I am completely ignorant about it all. I know nothing even about my own father. It’s almost as though I never had a father.’

How stupid! Of course she must have had a father but she had never even seen a photograph of him. Any time she had begun to question Mummy about him, Mrs. Gray had said:

“He is dead, dear—I don’t want to speak about him.”

Alan Spencer had been inquisitive about Rowan’s parentage. In fact, Rowan recalled now that it was Alan who had made that insinuating remark about ‘her birth being shrouded in mystery’.

“Everybody in Jordans wonders,” he had said.

What did they wonder? Rowan did not know. But sometimes she wondered, too. There were all kinds of possibilities. She never explored any of them. She preferred not to. Sometimes she built up the idea that it was just because her mother had been very unhappy with her father that she did not want to keep his memory alive. So—if that was what Mummy wanted—Rowan wanted it, too.

But now—now that she was alone and the world stretched before her like a wide and terrifying jungle which had to be explored whether she wanted to or not—a thousand doubts and queries assailed her mind like invisible enemies.

Suddenly the fount of grief seemed to dry up. Her heart began to race; her pale cheeks to burn; with an expression of mingled curiosity and repugnance, she unlocked the bureau and opened it.

ANN and Bill Jenkins, having marshalled their children off to bed, were busily engaged spraying their roses with insecticide when they heard footsteps and turned to see Rowan Gray walking down the flagged path towards them.

Mrs. Jenkins, a tall strong young woman with a thick mop of reddish hair which she never had time to cut, and wearing slacks and a rather grubby jersey, put down her syringe and drew the back of her hand across her perspiring brow. It was the warmest evening they had had yet. Bill had been back from the City some time—he was a junior partner in a firm of solicitors—and they were taking the advantage of the light in order to get on with the gardening which was their pet hobby. Bill, so smartly groomed at the office, now looked as unkempt as his wife, but they were a happy pair. Enthusiastic about life and themselves—they adored their one-time farmhouse which they had bought cheap because it was falling to pieces, and which they had done up without help. They adored their mischievous ten-year-old son, Jeremy, who was now at day school in Beaconsfield. They adored their eight-year-old daughter, romantically christened ‘Ingrid’ but for ever called ‘Scrap’ because she was so small for her age. They cared nothing that they had to work terrifically hard. Ann had no domestic help. Bill had to give a hand with the chores and the children when he was at home. School fees were crippling. To run a home nicely even in an economic way meant a drain on modest resources in these days. But the Jenkins continued to adore life—and each other.

They had been saddened by the death of their nearest neighbour. Bill hadn’t been able to get away for the funeral but Ann had been there to hold Rowan’s hand. This evening, while the Jenkins cherished their roses, they had been discussing Rowan.

“I really don’t know what she is going to do. She seems so alone in the world,” Ann had just been saying.

“She’ll get married, perhaps,” was Bill’s hopeful opinion.

“Darling, to get married, you’ve first got to get a chap interested in you and then be interested in him,” announced Ann.

Bill, who had just knocked a bud off a rose with his spray, hastily pocketed it so that Ann could not see, and grinned at her.

“Like you were in me, sweetie.”

“Like I am in you,” corrected Ann.

“Honey, shall I stop serious work and come and kiss the dirt off your nose?” asked Bill.

“I’d enjoy that,” said Ann, “but I want to talk about Rowan. What can we do to help her, Bill?”

“Suggest she sells Beacon Cottage and comes to live at Blackthorn Farm with us. The kids are crazy about her. She might be helpful.”

“Bill darling, you are an egotistical male. We’re supposed to be trying to help her.”

“Why can’t she get married?” persisted Bill.

“She’s such a child, still. Could you imagine making a pass at her?”

“I wouldn’t make a pass at anybody but you. I’m a respectable married man.”

Ann’s brown rather charming face with tip-tilted nose and narrow laughing eyes, assumed a satirical expression.

“Darling, Rowan is thin and immature and not your type. Don’t be so holy.”

Bill scratched his head.

“Well, naturally if she had a luscious figure like yours—”

“Oh, be quiet,” broke in Ann, blushing furiously. “What are we going to do for Rowan?”

“Will Mrs. Gray have left her any money?”

“Nobody knows. The old girl was always so secretive and I don’t think even Rowan knew her mother’s business. I’ve always said there was a mystery there. Once I had a natter with her about Rowan and she seemed worried, herself, about what might happen to Rowan if she died an early death—Mrs. Gray I mean. I told her I thought Rowan ought to see more people and get a boy-friend but she said Rowan wasn’t that sort.”

“I think she’s a sweet kid,” said Bill, “but a bit shy for my liking.”

Ann bent over one of her newest rose bushes and shot an extra vicious load of insecticide at a pink bud which was a green mass of flies.

“Duckie—she’s only nineteen. She hasn’t developed sexually yet. Maybe she’s a ‘still water’. That dreamy romantic timid type often turn out to be quite torrid in time.”

“Oh, lead me to the torrid zones!” Bill began to sing. It was just then that they saw Rowan coming down the path, stopped talking and waved to her.

“I’m so glad to see you, Rowan,” called Ann, “I hoped you’d come. No good sitting by yourself.”

Rowan made no answer. She was close beside them now and they saw how deadly pale she was, and that she was trembling.

Ann Jenkins, first and foremost a mother, put down her spray, dusted her grimy hands on the seat of her slacks and looked at the young girl with concern.

“Has anything happened, dear—I mean is anything wrong?” she began.

Then Rowan, who so rarely showed her feelings, crumpled up. She hadn’t done so even at the funeral of her mother. She just stood there at the graveside, mute and stiff, looking down with tragic, tearless eyes. Ann had rather wished she would cry and be comforted. But now, Rowan burst into tears. In fact, she began to sob as though in passionate protest of what life was doing to her. To her breast she hugged a leather-bound book—Ann couldn’t at that moment see the word ‘Diary’ that was written on it. Then, regardless of Bill Jenkins’ embarrassed gaze, she flung herself into Ann’s outstretched arms and gasped:

“Oh, Ann, Ann, it’s too terrible.”

Mistakenly, Mrs. Jenkins thought that the girl alluded to her mother’s death.

“There, there,” she said, “come in with me and have a good cry. …” And she led the weeping, distracted Rowan through the lichen-covered portico, into the big cool hall of the farmhouse, farther into a small untidy room filled with books, where the Jenkins usually sat once the day’s work was done.

Ann drew Rowan down on to the big settee which was her special pride and joy because she, herself, had made the chintz cover. (It fitted nowhere but she had made it and Bill never stopped admiring it.)

She let Rowan cry on her shoulder for a moment, petting her as she did Scrap whenever there was what was known in the house as a ‘carry-on’. Scrap was rather emotional and given to ‘carry-ons’. She frequently raised her voice in protest against the impish designs of her brother who loved to tease her. In a way, thought Ann, Rowan was rather like Scrap; they were both small and . . .