The War Before Mine Page 25

  ‘Ye’ll not know where Fenwicks is, I suppose? I’ll take you.’ He steered a course up a steep hill into the heart of the town. ‘I’ll be waiting,’ he says. ‘It’s on the second floor. I’d take that off if I were you.’ Philip tucked the rosette into his pocket.

  Jean came out, blonde hair tucked behind her ears, flushed, her face enquiring, pretty in a way totally unlike her sister. Philip quickly explained who he was. ‘Can I take you for a coffee?’

  Jean glanced over to a fierce-looking woman, evidently the manageress. ‘Ye’ll be lucky, she’ll never let me.’ But Philip tackled the manageress himself, pulling the soldier trick. ‘If you would be so good as to let Jean off for an hour. We haven’t seen each other for so long,’ the unspoken message being for the boys, for England. The woman relented, swivelling her protuberant eyes to pink Jean, who was inspecting her reddened hands and pretending not to listen. ‘Very well. But only for an hour. Sybil will cover for you.’

  Jean melted a corner of a sugar lump in her coffee and sucked at it greedily. ‘She said she’d write again when she got settled. That were two year ago. Told me her lad had gone missing in the war. Was that you?’ Jean sank her small white teeth into a cream horn. ‘I knew she’d go for a good-looking one.’ She darted her tongue along her top lip. ‘Reading between the lines, I thought she’d got herself into trouble.’

  ‘Was there an address on the letter?’

  ‘No. But it was postmarked London. She said she was moving around a bit and would send me her address when she got somewhere permanent.’ Jean rubbed at her knuckles. ‘Excuse me scratchin’ all the time. It’s the perm lotion. Murder for itching.’ She ran a finger around the plate before adding placidly, ‘I’m dead worried. But I reckon she knows she cannot come home with a bairn and no husband.’

  ‘I’m going to find her, Jean,’ Philip said, searching her plump pleasant face for some resemblance to vivid Rosie. He wrote his address on a Labour Party leaflet and gave it to her. ‘Write to me, if you hear anything. The minute you do.’

  Jean licked her fingers, took the paper, folded it neatly and slipped it into her purse. ‘That was a lovely cake,’ she said.

  He hadn’t walked more than a few steps down Northumberland Street before John appeared. ‘Where to now?’

  ‘Taxi back to Gateshead to pick up my stuff, I suppose. Then down to London.’

  ‘Taxi? Can I come?’

  ‘If you like.’

  In the taxi, John said, ‘You must have plenty money.’

  ‘Not really.’ But then he thought I have got money. Now Dad has died I really have got plenty. I could do something with it.

  ‘Is London where Rosie’s at?’

  ‘It’s where Jean thinks she is.’

  At the station, John was still with him, insisting on carrying Philip’s bag along the platform. The boy was like a woolly stray whose faithful companionship one came to enjoy, not to be shaken off without very harsh words or the stick. Once inside the train, Philip released the leather strap and pushed the window down. ‘Thanks very much for everything,’ he said to John, offering a ten-shilling note.

  John shook his head. ‘You keep your money.’ The guard blew his whistle. ‘I just want you to find her.’ He trotted along beside the moving train. ‘And when you do, you say to her, “Your John was askin’ for you…”’

  The train settled into its rhythm. Philip, optimistic, planned the continuation of his quest as Durham gave way to the North Riding of Yorkshire, then the West Riding, then the flat fields of Lincolnshire. But in the last hour of daylight, as the train rumbled towards the end of its journey, the landscape filled with miles upon miles of buildings regularly interspersed by bomb sites, and every one of these seemed Rosie’s possible grave. Philip pressed his fingers into his brow, thinking even if she’s alive it will take a miracle to find her in London.

  But miracles do happen. A week later, back in the hot office helping the Army fill in its forms, he heard the newsboy below the window bellowing Labour’s landslide victory.

  Gateshead 1939

  The first day she goes out with Aunt Betty, Rosie finds herself in a street she already knows from her walks with Mam. The big houses are set back from the road, and around the corner, up a narrower lane, is the house where Mam had been brought up. ‘I didn’t live in a back-to-back. I lived in a terrace, with its own back yard and a little front garden with yellow tulips in spring.’ It always sounded like once upon a time. If Da was out, Mam would get them all sitting on her bed and tell stories. ‘I didn’t have to share anything with anyone else. I had a bedroom to myself. There was just me and your Grandad and your Grandma. We had a cat called Sadie and a dog called Nipper.’

  ‘Where are they now, Grandad and Grandma?’ one of the little ones would be sure to ask.

  ‘With Our Lady in Heaven, of course. They were old when they had me. It was like a miracle. I was a miracle baby.’

  ‘What kind of dog was it?’ That would be John.

  The more difficult questions that came to Rosie’s mind now she was older, such as, ‘Why did you marry Da?’ and ‘What happened to Grandad’s money?’ you didn’t ask, because Mam would get upset, and say if only her own father had still been alive, and how her much older brother had treated her very unkindly, turning her own mother against her.

  Rosie didn’t want fairy stories any more. What was the use? It was another world, like Da had said, that was all gone. You just got on with it. Reality.

  Aunt Betty adjusts the little blue hat on Rosie’s head. ‘Bite your lip, go on, make them nice and pink. Right. Off you go, charva, and don’t take no for an answer.’

  Rosie walks up what seems a very long path to the stained glass and shining brass knocker of the front door. The door opens.

  ‘Can you get your mistress, please?’

  The uniformed maid screws up her face and opens the door wider to fully occupy the space. ‘What’s it about, like?’

  ‘I’m offering money for unwanted items. Clothes, china, that sort of thing.’

  ‘My missus won’t have anything for the likes of ye.’

  Rosie digs in her pocket for the sixpence. ‘Just gan get her, will you, suet face?’

  Aunt Betty can’t get over it. It’s the best day she’s had for weeks, she says, and takes Rosie out to tea in Shephard’s. ‘You’re definitely one of us, charva. On your Da’s side.’ Rosie eats the Bath bun and feels pleased with herself. A friend of Aunt Betty’s pauses at their table. ‘You should have heard her, Ethel,’ Betty goes on, ‘“Good morning, madam, could you spare a moment? We’re interested in helping you get rid of any unwanted items.” She sounded like Queen Mary! The stuff we got! Take a look at this!’

  Ethel is a big flat-faced woman, famous, Rosie knows, for giving her husband as good as she gets and more. She peers into the bag Betty holds open. ‘Crown Derby,’ she says, ‘That should fetch a good price.’ Betty digs in beneath the china, pulling out a hank of fabric. ‘Lovely bit of chenille, look.’

  Ethel folds her arms and looks Rosie up and down, ‘I’ll tell you something, Betty,’ she said, ‘If I were as pretty as she was, I wouldn’t be civil to anyone.’

  As they lug the bags home, they pass newspaper hoardings about Mr Chamberlain going to Germany. ‘What happens if there’s a war, Aunt Betty?’

  ‘Won’t concern us. We’ll gan on the same as ever.’

  ‘But shouldn’t we fight for England?’

  ‘What for, like? What’s England ever done for us?’

  28

  London, July 1945 – September 1946

  ‘Think of it as playing the piano, girls. A piece of Tchaikovsky. Rhythmic and romantic.’ Miss Bigg, a small dusty-brown woman, closed her eyes and waggled her fingers in the air by way of illustration.

  ‘She’s a scream, isn’t she?’ whispered the girl sitting at the next desk. Rosie nodded.

  ‘Fingers poised on the home keys, girls,’ trilled Miss Bigg. ‘Beeee-gin!’ The room shook with th
e plunge of two hundred digits, with pings and cranks and the thud thud thud of depressed shifts. In the lovely forgetful din, Rosie’s right index finger reached across and dived for the ‘y’ her left stretched sideways for the ‘h’. ‘Eyes ahead! Don’t look down!’

  Miss Bigg allowed the earthquake to go on for exactly five minutes, then raised her hand. The room juddered into stillness. Dust swirled in the rays of a strong June sun. Behind their crouching black Imperials and Olivettis, the girls’ faces glistened with effort. They chattered softly as Miss Bigg hopped around the room, inspecting work.

  Rosie looked at the clock. Eleven am. Alex would come looking for her in the kitchen at this time. She’d give him the cake tins and a wooden spoon to bang, or heave him up to help her roll out the pastry. Rosie closed her eyes and imagined the soft weight of him in her lap, her knees jiggling to the comforting rhythm of the song she’d sing in his ear.

  ‘O mother, mother what a rose I be

  To have a little boy like you round me’

  Miss Bigg was behind her, craning her thin neck. ‘You must strike your “f”s with greater precision.’ She reached out a little dry claw to scratch at Rosie’s paper. ‘You see? You still have a ghostly g appearing.’ Rosie nodded.

  ‘A diddlum a diddlum a diddlum a dee,

  Diddlum a diddlum a rum tum tee.’

  If he came, the new cook would send him away with a slap.

  Released for lunch, the girls seized their handbags and clattered down to the street. From the twenty strangers of the first day, they’d coalesced three weeks later into several distinct groups. Rosie watched her feet on the brown linoleum-covered stairs as she slowly descended. Big step now. I’ve got you. One, two. DOWN.

  The girl she’d been next to was waiting at the bottom, her friends hovering a few yards further off. ‘We’re going to John Lewis’s for lunch. Would you like to come?’

  Rosie dredged up a response, ‘No, thank you. Thank you for asking,’ and in five minutes’ walk was at the famous toy shop, wandering among children at last, storing up marvels for Alex: the white bear as big as Sister Fran, a Ferris wheel that played music and turned all on its own… She bought a book called Look at London!, seeing herself showing him the pictures of buses and trains when she visited him on Sunday for the first time.

  ‘Look! Look!’ A voice so like her own son’s. It couldn’t possibly be, but still she turned her head to the boy, running unsteadily towards a little circle of children. Yes, like Alex, a beautifully dressed Alex, round-faced, dark-eyed.

  The boy stopped. ‘Look!’ He pointed at a magnificent bright green steam engine, almost large enough to sit on, and glanced back for his mother. Rosie squatted down, breathing his excitement. Just to be close calmed her, loosened the knot inside.

  A man with a thin black moustache poured spirit into a rectangular tin and inserted it into the rear of the locomotive. ‘Now we wait,’ he said to the children watching.

  ‘What do you think’s going to happen?’ Rosie whispered.

  Up on tiptoe, just barely containing the thrill of the moment, the boy dug little white teeth into his lip, opened his eyes wide at Rosie, shook his head. The demonstrator cupped his ear theatrically. ‘Listen, children!’ A bubbling, gurgling sound emerged from the engine; steam hissed from its painted flanks.

  Hands clasped together on his chest, the boy held his breath. A shrill whistle sounded and the engine shunted forward. A squeal, a jump. ‘Look! Look!’

  A manicured, married hand descended on the child’s shoulder. He laughed up at his mother and she ruffled his hair. A red and blue embroidered yacht sailed across the pocket of his shirt.

  Outside in the street, Rosie’s pain returned. She remembered Alex at the window, held up by Sister Fran to open and close his fist goodbye. He’d looked happy; sure she’d be back as she always was to read him a story and kiss him goodnight.

  Sunday. On Sunday she’d hold her son’s hand; she could feel it now, almost. She’d kneel, arms held out, to call, ‘Come on!’ and he’d rush down the corridor. Perhaps Sister Fran would let her give him a bath and she’d sing Bobby Shafto’s gone to se-ee, Silver buckles on his knee-ee as she dried between his toes.

  ‘Come along, now. Get your notebook out.’ Miss Bigg was ready to start shorthand. Rosie tried to concentrate on holding the pencil at the right angle, applying just the right amount of pressure to the slanting strokes.

  The warm weather continued until Sunday, when she took the bus down to Camberwell, her heart beating fast with hope. She’d find some way of keeping him. But he stared at her, her smudged grubby son, wearing odd socks, his shirt hanging out, and burst into tears. His face showed fear and uncertainty as much as longing. When she took him in her arms he clung to her; she had to prise away his fingers just to wash him, and when at last he settled a little there was only half an hour of the visit left. She sat him on her lap and took out the book she’d bought.

  Mummy and Daddy take John and Susan to London by train.

  In the picture, Daddy wore a uniform and smoked a pipe. Mummy had pink gloves and a matching hat. Mummy and Susan go shopping in Oxford Street.

  What fun! says Susan.

  Daddy and John visit Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. ‘Here is where new laws are made, John,’ says Daddy.

  Mummy and Daddy. The impossible words.

  Back in her small airless room, the only sound the shuffle and chink of Mrs Silverman moving about in the kitchen, Rosie pulled the shoebox from under the bed. Inside, Philip, his arm curled under the jacket she no longer wore, stared at the girl she no longer was. With her fingers she touched his face, tracing the line of his chin, so like their son’s, then removed her other treasures: the newspaper article about the raid, the bunch of dried bluebells, a rattle, a curl of hair tied with ribbon, and lastly, a tiny knitted jacket.

  Burying her nose in it brought tears. She’d lost Philip. Now she’d lost Alex. Rosie wrenched the cardboard cover from the horrible book and tore its pages into tiny pieces. She lay in the dark, watching the arcs of light sweeping across the ceiling as cars moved down the street. Only at dawn did she sleep.

  When Miss Bigg dismissed them all the next day, Rosie, determined not to spend another night alone in her room, followed her A–Z on a long walk down to Trafalgar Square, along Whitehall to Westminster and finally the peace of the Thames Embankment. It was warm enough, even at 8 p.m., to sit on a bench without a cardigan and watch the river slide past. On the following day she headed west to Marble Arch, then struck out over Hyde Park to Knightsbridge. It was mechanical, but it distracted her from thoughts of Alex and learning the layout of London gave her a small sense of purpose.

  The third night, with only a vague plan of going east, she stepped into the street and found her arm seized by a boy on the end of a long line of celebrating young men and women, bellowing out endless choruses of ‘When the Lights go up all over the World’. It was Victory over Japan day.

  She stayed out until ten, and when she got back to her digs, sad Mrs Silverman offered her a frothy cup of cocoa and one of her lovely pastries. Mrs Silverman came from Germany; she’d lost almost all her family in the concentration camps. She fingered through her photographs, talking in her strange growly voice, telling Rosie their stories.

  Slowly, Rosie emerged from her trance of misery. There was a pleasant forgetfulness in learning the strange symbols and converting them into words to be banged out at ever-increasing speeds on the typewriter. And after such prolonged scolding, it was impossible to suppress a little thrill of pride when Miss Bigg praised her accuracy.

  Each Sunday, she took the bus down to Camberwell to renew her vows of sadness. She read to Alex, counted with him, took him out, bought him presents, tried to cram a mother’s care into the allotted three hours.

  At the end of the six-month course, Miss Bigg recommended her for a job at the Travel Bureau, a new organisation set up to attract more visitors, together with their much-needed cash, to Britain. Th
e man in charge was an ex-Army major called Denis. He winced when he heard Rosie’s accent, but was impressed with her reference.

  ‘Just what we need with all these brochures and what-have-you to get out,’ he said. ‘You won’t mind working up here? It’ll be just you and Moira.’ The socialising went on downstairs, where five Stella-type girls lay in wait to charm foreign visitors with their cut-glass accents, offer help and advice on where to go and how to get there, and between whiles share the secrets of their love lives in little high-pitched shrieks of merriment. Above their heads, Rosie and stony-faced Moira bashed away on their typewriters, Moira occasionally taking nips from a bottle concealed in her desk drawer.

  The Epsiloms came in one spring afternoon in 1946, a sandy-haired couple in their thirties, from Minneapolis. Later, Rosie found where it was in Mrs Silverman’s old atlas. They wanted help in arranging a trip to Bath, and because two of the downstairs girls were off sick and the others were busy, Denis came upstairs, took one look at Moira’s flushed face, and asked Rosie to help out.

  The Epsiloms spoke courteously in soft, slow voices; watched her with sea-green eyes. Rosie found them a train, a hotel and a brochure all about Bath. Mr Epsilom held out a freckled hand to wish her goodbye. ‘You’ve been so kind, Miss, Betty and I were wondering if you’d be available to show us round your beautiful city when we come back on Tuesday.’ Rosie looked over to Denis, who nodded enthusiastically and told them, ‘Yes. That would be quite all right.’

  Rosie was terrified. From her walks she knew her way about, but what could she tell them? She knew nothing about history! Denis simply waved her over to the guidebooks and told her not to worry, most Americans only wanted to see the inside of Harrods. But she felt the Epsiloms weren’t like that, and apart from her visit to Alex on Sunday, she spent the whole weekend reading up on all the sights and planning a route. They would walk a little slower than she did. There needed to be places to sit down, perhaps have a drink, on the way. It was a challenge and to her surprise, Rosie enjoyed it.