Free The Denniston Rose by Jenny Pattrick

your father.’
    Jimmy is working these days around the Banbury mine.
    ‘Dogsbody work,’ her father grumbles. ‘Whatever lowly graft a one-armed man can do.’ But he has promised to slip away and meet them on the plateau above the entrance for Rose’s picnic. ‘To tell the truth, girlie,’ says Jimmy, ‘the job is out of pity and I am little useanyway. They will only be glad if I am away for a bit, and they don’t have to look out for me.’
    Below them is the black entrance to the mine. The boxes on the moving skipway rattle in and out on their little railway lines. Here comes Jimmy Cork, scuttling up the slope, looking back to see if anyone has noticed. He is humming and smiling and nods at her in a secret way.
    ‘Well now, birthday girl, we are making progress with our plans,’ he whispers. ‘I think I have found a way! But that is our little secret, eh?’
    ‘Do you mean the gold?’ whispers Rose.
    Jimmy nods and winks and does a little dance.
    ‘Someone is in a good mood,’ says her mother, unwrapping the pikelets and spreading the blanket they have brought. Jimmy comes up behind her, puts his one good arm around her and gives her huge belly a good squeeze. Rose’s mother shrieks, but it is really a laugh. Jimmy beats on the lump of the baby like a drum and sings:
    Bright fine gold,
    Bright fine gold.
    One a pecker two a pecker,
    Bright fine gold .
    Quick as a flash, he snatches a pikelet and stuffs it in his mouth. Rose and her mother shout and chase him around the rocks and lumpy moss, all of them laughing and shouting, until Jimmy is caught and marched back to the blanket.
    ‘There are five each and you have only four left,’ says Rose, pulling her father’s beard until the tears roll down his face.
    ‘Oho! And so I have bred a mathematical genius then,’ says Jimmy. ‘Well, it is no surprise, given her father’s intelligence, and ifyou have half your mother’s looks you will take the world by storm!’
    It is the best time Rose can remember.
    ‘Jimmy, you will not lose your job, now, stealing away like this?’ says Rose’s mother, and Jimmy laughs.
    ‘See now, Angel, this job is only a stop-gap till we find our feet, which may be sooner rather than later. My job today,’ and he spits on the ground, ‘is to wander around like some poor lost soul with a lamp, testing the air. The inspector has complained of the air once more and the manager is trying to fob him off with a full-time, one-armed air tester. He knows he should cut another air shaft but he’s too mean to waste the money. Oh yes, the miners laugh to see me wander around. And grumble if I get in their way. Those sour-faced Scobies! Twice already they have made it damned clear they are better off without me. Well, let them laugh. I know a thing or two.’ Here Jimmy winks at Rose. ‘Jesus, I hate those stuck-up English miners and their opinionated sons.’
    ‘Jimmy, Jimmy,’ says Rose’s mother, ‘do not spoil a good day with your moaning. You have a job and it is the child’s birthday.’
    ‘And the hens have started laying,’ says Rose, ‘and I found three eggs — two from Lady Alice and one from Queen Victoria — and we have made these fifteen pikelets in the frying pan and so here we are on a picnic!’
    He father laughs. ‘What a torrent! Quick, let us stop her mouth with a pikelet before we are drowned in words.’
    Her mother and her father are both hungry so they eat five pikelets each, and all the jam and a quarter of an apple each, and her mother gives the last quarter to Rose’s father.
    He wipes his orange beard with his hand, then rubs his hand on the grass.
    ‘Those were the best pikelets I’ve ever tasted.’
    ‘What’s put you in such a good mood?’ says Rose’s mother.
    ‘Well, those pikelets, naturally,’ says Jimmy, but he winks at Rose.
    Rose’s mother shifts to find a more comfortable place. ‘Lack of drink more like,’ she says.
    ‘Ah, don’t start now, it is the child’s