At the Break of Day Read online

  Nailing was dying in Bromsgrove, there was nothing to be made from it any more. His wife had wanted to come south and he remembered with bitterness her face that day when she had insisted they move. But then he pushed the memory from him and thought instead of the land of his roots and Herefordshire too; the sweeping hills, the lush green of the fields, the hops strung so high – and he smiled at the comfort the memory brought.

  Yes, there had been despair behind Rosie’s love, and he knew it was because she’d left a land and people she’d grown to care for and there was an ache in his chest at her pain. He eased himself back down, pulling the sheet up round his shoulders. He understood that and he would try and take her back to those hills where the scent of the past would ease the present, perhaps for them all, even Maisie and Ollie.

  CHAPTER 3

  The night had been long, and as Rosie washed in the sink she longed for her own shower and scented soap back in Lower Falls, but there was only the tin bath which hung on the yard wall. Tonight, she thought, she would drag it in when Grandpa was asleep and Norah in bed. Tonight and every night, not just once a week like before she went away.

  Grandpa was sitting at the table. Rosie had washed through his drenched sheets and his pyjamas and they were hung on the line, along with his rubber square. She had hoisted them high with the pole but not too high, because he had said that he did not like the neighbours to know.

  ‘Even Jack’s mum and dad?’ she had asked gently as he dipped his bread in some warm milk after he had sponged himself down standing on newspaper behind the curtain.

  ‘Even Ollie and Maisie,’ he had said.

  She carried her tea out into the yard, standing by the shed in the spot the sun reached at this hour of the morning. She listened to the sounds of the street, the dogs, the children, the whistling bike-riders, the rag and bone cry. She looked up at Jack’s house. The windows were blank and there was no sound. Before she left there had always been laughter and music and shouting.

  Her grandfather walked out now and sat on the bench, his back against the wall. He had a walking stick which he propped between his knees. When she was young he would bring peas home on a Saturday wrapped in newspaper and on Sunday they would shell them, sitting on the back step, eating some, putting the rest into Grandma’s pan.

  Jack would come in and pinch five, always five, throwing them up and catching them in his mouth. Then Maisie would shout across the wall that there was bread and hot dripping from around the piece of scrag-end. She, Jack, and sometimes Norah would go while Ollie and Grandpa went to the pub on the corner for a pint.

  The pub had gone too, she realised now. She had forgotten that it had existed, down next to Mr Meiner. She fingered the peach rose, The Reverend Ashe, which grew up against the shed. It had taken a fancy to the creosote, Grandpa had laughed in the year before the war. She had made perfume with its petals. The water had gone brown but there had been a weak scent.

  She had given a bottle to Grandma, Norah and Maisie. Maisie had laughed and dabbed some on behind her ears, heavy with earrings, throwing back her head, patting her hair, telling them it made her feel like a ruddy duchess. Ollie roared and slapped her on the backside. Grandma and Norah had thrown theirs down the sink.

  As Norah grew older she had always copied Grandma, though Rosie could remember that when they were small sometimes they had laughed together. But as Grandma grew more bitter, more angry, Norah copied her. They froze Rosie out. They formed a team. A team ‘who knew better’, who were older, wiser. Just more crabby, Jack had always said.

  Rosie drank her tea, which was too cold now, then threw the dregs around the roots.

  ‘You remembered then, Rosie,’ Grandpa called.

  Rosie smiled. ‘Yes, I’ve never forgotten.’ But she had until this moment. She had forgotten that the tea leaves nourished the roots.

  She moved into the shadow, sitting with him, tucking her hand in his arm. It was thin and his armbands sagged above the elbows. His cuffs were drooping on his wrists. ‘I’ll sew a tuck in those sleeves for you, shall I?’

  She smiled as he nodded and patted her hand. His joints were swollen, his skin was dry and thin, stretched too tight. They sat in silence now and still there was no movement from Jack’s house. At home there would be the smell of waffles cooking and the sound of jazz playing, and she had to talk to muffle the memory.

  ‘Do you remember the peas, Grandpa?’ Rosie asked as she watched a bee weave in and out of the rose bushes.

  He chuckled. ‘They were good times.’

  Rosie nodded, looking up into the sky, which was pale blue with small white clouds that seemed to fit the size of England. Yes, perhaps they were but she had seen another world and she couldn’t leave it behind yet. Would she ever be able to? She looked at Jack’s house again.

  ‘What’s wrong next door? Jack seemed strange. He told me not to go in. There was something in his eyes.’

  Grandpa leaned forward, poking the ground with his stick, rubbing it backwards and forwards across the cracks in the concrete. ‘You’ll have to ask Jack. People have a right to their privacy. He’ll tell you what he wants you to know, if there is anything. It’s maybe just the war.’

  He brought out his handkerchief and wiped the corners of his mouth. ‘It’s maybe just the war, Rosie. It changes so much.’

  ‘Yes, Grandpa. But you haven’t changed and neither have I.’ Did he know she was lying?

  Rosie left him in the yard then because she was thinking too clearly of Frank and Nancy, of Sandra and Joe, and there was no place for them here where there was no shower, just a tin bath. Where her grandpa’s skin was tight and old, where there was no laughter from Maisie.

  She was glad she had to sort out ration cards, jobs, shopping. That would do for now. Later, when the sun was past its height she would talk to Jack. Later still she would write to Frank to refuse his offer of money to finance further education. All that was over. They were no longer responsible for her. She was back in her old world. She looked at the list Norah had written, this was her reality now.

  Rosie spent an hour at the Food Office waiting for a ration card, then joined a queue forming outside a small shop and waited for half an hour shuffling forward slowly while the sun beat down. Norah had said, join any queue you see, there’ll be something at the end of it, but today it was dog food and they didn’t have a dog. She bought a pound anyway and gave it to the woman at the end of the queue with two crying children. She knew Jack would have sold it to a man without a dog for twice as much and she smiled at the thought.

  She registered with Norah’s grocer round the corner whom she had known as a child, collecting tea and cheese at the same time. The shop seemed so dark, so small. The goods on the shelves were dull, meagre. He nodded to her. ‘Back then. Norah told us you’d had it easy.’

  ‘I guess I did,’ she replied and watched his tight withdrawn face, wanting to apologise, wanting to take the years back, stay here, be one of them again. But at the same time, wanting to shout her anger at him.

  ‘Next please,’ he called, hurrying her, looking past her.

  ‘I’d like some Players, please,’ she said, resisting the push from behind.

  ‘Only available to our regulars.’ He was reaching forward for the next customer’s ration card.

  ‘They’re for Grandpa,’ Rosie insisted, not moving over. She had just enough for a packet and then her money from Frank was gone.

  The man sighed. His brows met across the bridge of his nose and his eyes were tired. He bent below the counter and passed her one pack.

  ‘Thanks.’ She paid and walked past the queue which was jostling behind her.

  ‘These Americans think they can come here and throw their money about. Isn’t right, it isn’t,’ one old lady said to the woman next to her. Rosie didn’t look at them, she didn’t look anywhere but in front, thinking of the lake, of the sloping lawns and the soaring music. I didn’t choose to go, she wanted to scream at their shadowed faces and re
sentful backs.

  She walked back down the street towards the Woolworths in Albany Street. She wouldn’t cry, she mustn’t. Whatever she did, she mustn’t let these Britishers see her pain, or even her anger because she had no right to that. They had stayed and endured. She had fled.

  Outside Woolworths she stopped, looking in through the glass doors, seeing the lights, the long alleys of counters. She and Jack had pinched a 6d car from here when they were eight. She’d longed to work in amongst it all. But that was then.

  At eleven she stood in an office before a white-haired supervisor, her hair permed like Norah’s.

  ‘So, you’re Norah’s sister. Good worker, that girl.’

  The woman had run her lipstick outside her top lip to thicken it. Her breath smelt of tea as she moved behind Rosie to take out a file from the cabinet and then returned to her seat.

  ‘Sit down then.’ There was a cup half full on the desk with a cigarette stub floating in it.

  ‘Thanks,’ Rosie said, smoothing her skirt, not looking into the cup.

  The woman brushed at the corners of her mouth with her little finger. There was a brass ring with a bright red glass stone on her wedding finger. ‘Well, you’ll have to do something about your voice, if you know what I mean.’

  Rosie looked at her. ‘No, I guess I don’t.’

  ‘Well, listen to that. You sound like a Yank. I don’t know what our customers would think, I really don’t. This is Albany Street, not Hollywood.’ The woman frowned. ‘But Norah did put in a good word for you. You’ve got that old man at home to support, haven’t you? Need all the help you can get, I should think.’

  ‘My grandfather, you mean. He has his own money. He doesn’t need ours. Norah and I have to work to keep ourselves, not him. It’s his house, you know. He gives us a home.’ She was tired now, so goddamn tired of it all, so sick of Norah. ‘He’s a real nice man. Kind of quiet but nice.’

  She looked out across the store with its counters glistening with goods. Norah was on jewellery, leaning back talking to the girl at the other end. She was smiling, her mouth a slash of red.

  ‘Oh well, we need someone on records anyway though the stock is very limited these days. Maybe the voice will fit in there. All American anyway, aren’t they, these singers?’ The woman’s voice was slower, kinder. When she smiled the lines cut deep. ‘My dad was a nice man too.’

  Rosie looked at her closely now and felt her face begin to relax.

  ‘We had a lot of Americans here in the war. They’d come and talk. My friend married one. She’s in California now.’ The woman was pulling her overalls across her breast. ‘Yes, proper little meeting-place in here. It’s very dull now. England is very dull. I expect you’ve found that.’

  Rosie looked out again, across the aisles. ‘I only got in yesterday and I guess it’s real good to be here.’ If she said it often enough it might help it to be the truth.

  ‘Oh well, that’s nice.’ The woman was moving towards the door. ‘Perhaps we can move you into the snack bar when we get one. You seem like a good girl. Start tomorrow, why don’t you.’

  Rosie walked out of the office into the hub of the store. The Andrews Sisters were singing ‘The Three Caballeros’ and she wondered how Albany Street would take to Bix Beiderbecke. She walked past Norah and smiled – after all they were not children feuding any longer. Norah had been unfairly treated and Rosie must damp down the anger.

  ‘I’m on records,’ she said.

  ‘Well, don’t be late. Grandpa needs his lunch. There’s a nice bit of Spam in the meat-safe.’ Norah turned away, then back again.

  ‘I suppose you’re meeting that Jack. Well, not until you’ve done the chores, you’re not.’

  ‘One day, you’ll find yourself being pleasant and it will be as much of a goddamn shock to yourself as it will be to the rest of the world.’ Rosie walked away, leaving Norah to close her open mouth, and all the way home she was glad she had let the anger out. It helped her to lift her head, but from now on she must rein back in.

  She opened a tin of American ham for Grandpa instead.

  ‘This is our celebration,’ she told him. There was no ice-box so Rosie drank lukewarm milk, then sank the bottle into the pail of water again. She stood a bowl in water and left half the ham in it for Norah’s meal that evening. It was only fair.

  She and Grandpa ate tinned peaches which slipped on the spoon and were easy to eat. Juice trickled down both their chins and they laughed as they had done before she left.

  It was only when he was asleep and the floor was washed, the dishes too, when the cooker was cleaned and her arms were black from the grime, when the beds were made, that she left, wondering how Norah could sleep with those fox’s eyes glinting on the back of the door. But what did it matter? She was going to see Jack, but then she heard her grandfather calling. She turned. He was in the doorway, waving to her, leaning on his stick with the other hand.

  ‘You forgot your matchbox.’

  For a moment Rosie paused and then she remembered the ladybirds which she used to catch in a matchbox she always carried when she went out. She called, ‘No I didn’t, I’ve got one in my pocket. Don’t worry, we’ll keep the roses clear of greenfly.’

  He smiled and waved again and turned back into the house. Rosie stopped at a tobacconist, bought a matchbox and tipped the matches out into the bin. He mustn’t know that she had forgotten.

  Malvern Lane was too narrow to receive much sun and Rosie watched as Jack moved backwards and forwards in front of his stall, holding a flowered teapot high above his head, laughing with one woman, nodding to another who picked up a saucer and turned it over in her hands. She dropped money into his left hand and pushed the saucer deep into her shopping bag.

  ‘Come on then, ladies. Don’t let the rationing get to you. Look, it’s a lovely day up there above the clouds, let’s have a smile, shall we?’ He was laughing now and the crowd laughed with him, Rosie too, but he hadn’t seen her yet and she was glad. She wanted to stand here, listening, watching, trying to ease into London just for a moment. Trying to push away the thought of the intersections, the streetcars, the ice-cream parlors.

  ‘Just look at this.’ Jack pointed to the teapot which he still held high. ‘When did you last see a splash of colour like this then, eh? Can’t buy it now, can you? Certainly not. Only white can be made the chiefs have said.’ He looked round at them all. ‘Well, that’s as may be, but today is your lucky day. Here –’ Jack turned and gestured to the back of the stall – ‘I have just a few little treasures so who’s going to give me five bob for this then?’

  It went on like that for half an hour and by that time all the coloured china had gone, as Rosie knew it would, and as the crowds thinned he saw her and called across.

  ‘Did you remember your matchbox, then?’

  The woman in front of Rosie turned. Her cheeks were red and her smile broad. ‘He’s a one, that lad. Could charm the bleeding birds out of the trees.’

  Rosie laughed and held up the box. She didn’t want to speak, to drawl. She didn’t know if the woman would stop smiling.

  ‘Be with you in half an hour. The gang’s coming,’ Jack called again, then he laughed as a woman came and slapped his arm, giving him money for two plates and telling him she’d take another if he threw in a kiss with it. He looked at Rosie again and pointed to his watch. It wasn’t gold, his skin wasn’t tanned. Was Joe playing tennis now? Was Sandra?

  She wandered off, down the lane, moving out round a heap of yellowed cabbage leaves whose smell followed her on down past the potatoes, the lettuce, and drowned the scent of the pinks tied in small bunches and left to stand in a tin jug.

  There was a tea stall and she bought a cup, sipping it, hearing the past all around her, the noises, the voices, breathing in the smells which had faded and vanished with the years. But they were here again, all here.

  So, the gang was coming too. She didn’t remember them, not their names or their faces. It was only Jack she
had pictured over the years and the miles. Would Joe and Sandra forget her too?

  When she returned Jack was waiting, his old leather money apron now tied around the waist of his father, Ollie, who had run the stall for as long as Rosie could remember. She started to walk towards Ollie but Jack caught at her arm.

  ‘Leave it for now.’

  They walked to the rec where they had scuffed the ground with worn plimsolls on hot days as they pumped themselves higher and higher on swings already raised by being thrown over the bar. They didn’t talk as they walked through the streets, and Jack had to lead the way because she had forgotten. He sauntered, hands in pockets, his two-tone shoes worn, his hair hanging down over his forehead.

  She remembered her shoes, and the sweater she had worn back to front as all Lower Falls girls did, but they were in her room, on the shelf below the Cougar pennant and she mustn’t think of that.

  They crossed wasteground which had once been three houses. The rec was across the road from Oundle Street where there were houses with black-tarred casement sheets instead of glass. They were all deserted and two were ripped apart; just as she felt.

  She remembered the park with railings but they were gone and now Jack told her how his mum had written to say that they had been taken away by men with oxyacetylene cutters to build Spitfires.

  ‘How’s your mum?’ she asked. ‘It was so quiet today.’

  His eyes were dark as he turned, then looked past her. ‘Race you to the swings.’

  He ran, catching her arm, running with her across worn asphalt where weeds were breaking through, running faster than her, goddamn it, and so now she spurted but he was still ahead and the breath was leaping in her throat as the swings drew nearer. But he was first, throwing himself on to one, pushing back with his feet, lifting them high and then surging forward, up into the air.

  She sat on hers and looked at the sign that said, ‘12 YEARS AND UNDER ONLY.’

  ‘Hey, we’ll be done.’

  She heard his laugh. ‘Come on, Yank. We’ve just been through a war. No one’s going to stop me swinging if I want to.’