At the Break of Day Page 6

  She pushed off now, feeling the air slicing through her, half pain, half pleasure. The links were rusty and stained her hands and then there was only the squealing of the chain and their laughter. She leaned back, the sky was blue. It was the same sky over America. Maybe it wasn’t so far after all, but she knew that it was.

  Afterwards they talked, still sitting on the swings, Jack’s legs gently moving his, his shoulders leaning hard into the chain, his hands between his knees.

  He told her then that Ollie was drinking, snarling. Sleeping a little. Working a little. That Maisie seldom laughed now.

  ‘But they were so different. Was it the war? What about Lee? Hasn’t he helped?’

  There were two small children standing by the swings now and Jack winked at them, standing, nodding to them.

  ‘It’s all yours,’ he called and they ran past him and Rosie, who stood too and watched as they scrambled on to the swings.

  ‘Give us push, mister,’ the boy with red hair said.

  Jack did and Rosie watched as his broad hands pushed and caught, pushed and caught the swing.

  ‘I’m OK now,’ the boy said and they walked over to the bench. The dark green paint was flaking. Rosie brushed the seat with her hand, rubbing the paint off as she sat.

  ‘Didn’t Lee help?’ Rosie insisted, watching the two children, hearing their yells clearly across the intervening space. She didn’t want to hear of Ollie snarling, of Maisie silent. She wanted to hear of laughter, of bread and dripping, of earrings jangling.

  Jack shrugged. He reached down, pulling at a dandelion which had lifted the asphalt. ‘He seems to have made it worse and he’s a lovely kid. It can’t have been the war either. Dad didn’t get called up. It’s his chest you see, collapsed lung. He built the new airfields, that sort of thing. Did a bit of dealing.’ He smiled slightly but his eyes were so angry.

  Rosie smiled, looking away. ‘I just bet he did.’

  ‘I wasn’t there, you see. The kids that came back after the first evacuation went away again with the Blitz, like you did.’ He flicked the shredded dandelion at her. ‘She was good to me though, Mum was. She came down visiting, you know. All the time. It was good fun.’

  ‘Was your dad jealous of that?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. He didn’t change until later. When he came to see me first he was fine. Took back a few hams, sold them well. Even did a bit of dealing with the GIs who were camped in the village.’ He paused and looked up at the sky, and his voice became angry. ‘But then, all of a sudden like, he stopped coming. Didn’t see Mum much come to that after D-Day. Busy, I expect, and then there was Lee. He’s got red hair too.’ Jack flicked a piece of grass off his trousers, nodding towards the boy he had pushed on the swing. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong. It’s just wrong. I wanted to tell you before you came. I didn’t want you upset.’

  His face was red now and he didn’t look at her. She wanted to reach across and hold him as he had once held her when she cut her knee and needed stitches. But they were children then. They were grown now and there was a difference somehow.

  He looked at her now and the anger had gone, there was just tiredness, like hers. ‘Come anyway. They want to see you but it’s funny, me dad doesn’t like Yanks.’

  Rosie looked at her hands. ‘He’s not the only one.’

  ‘Oh, I reckon it’s this rationing, you know. Makes people crabby.’

  There were voices behind them now, calling, shouting, and a football bounced behind them and over them and Jack looked at Rosie. ‘Remember the gang? I thought it would help you settle back in.’

  She did remember when they were all around, touching her clothes, laughing at her tan, at her voice, asking about Lower Falls and New York and the skiing. Telling her about Somerset, where they had all been evacuated. She looked away, wishing she had been with them, wishing that she belonged as she had once done.

  It was Sam, the old second-in-command, his hair in a crew cut, who showed her that for him at least she no longer did.

  ‘So you came back. Slumming, eh?’ he said, not looking away when Jack told him to shut his mouth. His pale eyes held hers as he bounced the ball, then threw it to Ted, then Jack. Then bounced it again.

  Her eyes were blurred but it was tiredness, she mustn’t think it was tears. She remembered Sam all too clearly now. He had tied her to a lamppost when they were nine and fired arrows at a potato he stuck on her head. She hadn’t cried then and she wouldn’t now.

  There were laughs and jokes, and always the ball was on the move. She watched, listened, smiled, waited and then Sam threw the ball to her, hard. She had known that he would and batted it straight back at him with a clenched fist as Frank had taught her. He caught it and threw it again, talking to Ted as he did so, but looking at her all the time.

  She threw the ball to Jack. He looked at Sam, then back at her. There was a question in his eyes and she knew he had brought them together deliberately, to face up and get it over with. She shook her head. She was angry now and she would deal with this herself. This was her rec too, her gang, and nobody was going to take it away from her. They’d taken enough already.

  She hurled the ball hard at Sam, and nothing more was said as they caught and threw, caught and threw, just the two of them. Her arm was tired and she was hot, but it didn’t matter. Frank had trained her well.

  It was Ted who broke the silence. ‘So, how’s po-face taken to you coming back?’ he asked.

  Rosie kept her eye on the ball, waiting for it to come again, feeling the stinging in her hands, seeing the two small boys running over from the swings, leaving a space beside her for them to join in. Waiting, too, for Sam. The ball came. She hurled it back. He caught it; she heard the slap of skin against leather. She needed her leather mitt.

  ‘You can’t blame Norah, she had a lousy time, like the rest of you,’ she panted.

  She caught the ball again, then batted it back but Jack intercepted and passed it on to the small red-haired boy. Rosie felt the throbbing in her hands, but she wouldn’t look at them. She looked instead at Sam. What would he do now?

  ‘No way that old bag had a bad time. Come on, let’s sit down,’ Dave called.

  Sparrows were sitting in the clubbed trees around the rec, singing and flying. Jack walked to the bench and the others followed. Sam took Woodbines from his pocket, shaking his head, looking at Rosie, his eyes still cold. His hands were red, like hers. Did they throb like hers too?

  ‘Your Norah should have gone too. Bloody unfair, I call it.’

  Jack looked up at Sam, then at Rosie and she shook her head again.

  Ted said, ‘That’s a load of rubbish. She was billeted with the doctor over in the next village. Had a life of old Reilly, never even had to flick a bleeding duster.’

  They were sitting and leaning on the bench now, cigarette smoke drifting up into the air, watching the two small boys kicking the ball from one to another, hearing the thuds. Rosie said nothing, not yet.

  Sam flicked his ash on to the ground, rubbing it in with his shoe. ‘I bet Rosie never had to flick a duster either. Bet she never had to queue for food. Bet she stuffed herself with ice-cream, steak, got taken out by flash American boys, the brothers of those GIs who swanked over here.’ Sam laughed but it was a hard sound. ‘Well, go on. Did you?’

  Rosie flushed, looking across at the two boys, then back at Sam again. ‘What’s wrong, bud, did a GI steal your girl?’

  Ted laughed, clapped Sam on the shoulder. ‘She got you there.’ They were all laughing now, Jack too, but his eyes were still watchful. Sam did not laugh.

  He stubbed out his cigarette carefully on the sole of his shoe and put it back in his cigarette packet. Rosie watched. She had forgotten people did that. She had forgotten that they needed to and she wanted to say she was sorry, but no, she had to fight Sam. That’s all there was to it, or there was no place for her here, with them.

  ‘No,’ Sam said, ‘nobody stole my girl. I just don’t like freeloaders who
come back home and lord it about in their new clothes, expecting everyone to bow and scrape because they’re back. This is the real world here.’

  They were all standing now and Rosie looked at all their faces. They were uncertain, all except Jack, who was looking at her, waiting to see if she could make it on her own. It was only if she couldn’t that he would come in. He had always been like that. He had always been there behind her.

  Sam turned to her. ‘You’ve had it on a plate. No rationing, no bombs, just bloody everything you want. So just don’t come back here, Rosie Norton, and drawl all over the rest of us.’

  There was silence. Jack was still watching her. ‘There was rationing,’ she said but that was all because they were never really short of anything, and there was no danger for her.

  ‘Oh yeah, when did you last have a banana?’ Sam said, his eyes narrow. Jack’s were, too, but they were looking at Sam.

  Rosie couldn’t answer because Frank had exchanged a piece of pork for a hand of bananas last year and the year before. She looked at them all, at their pale skins, their tired faces, and said, ‘You’re right. I had it cushy, I have a drawl. I had bananas last year and I’m sorry. It’s not fair. Do you think I don’t know that? But I’m back. I haven’t changed.’

  There was silence as they stood around her. Sam’s lips were still thin. Jack’s eyes were steady. The others were nodding, smiling, all uncertainty gone.

  Sam still didn’t smile though. He said, ‘OK, you say you haven’t changed.’ He looked at Jack. ‘You tell her about tonight, then bring her along. We’ll see if she’s changed. We’ll see if she’s got too good for us all.’

  Jack’s face set, he took Sam by the arm, moving him along towards the pavement. Ted followed. Dave and Paul too. Rosie didn’t. She watched them, then the delivery boy cycling past. He rode ‘no hands’ and sat with his arms folded, whistling. She looked back at the gang. What was happening tonight? Whatever it was, she’d do it.

  Ted turned towards her, then nodded to Jack, so did the others. Sam just stared and then called to her, ‘Be there.’

  The delivery boy had reached the corner. Rosie called back, ‘Bank on it, Sam.’ But what was it?

  As they walked back without Sam and the others, Jack told her about the bomb which had killed Sam’s mother, the GI jeep that had killed his sister. But he wouldn’t tell her about tonight. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you involved. I have to explain some things first.’

  They passed the black-tarred replacement windows in a damaged house and he told her how in this time of shortages he, Ollie, Sam and the gang had bought demob suits off the men coming home and resold them at a profit, and that didn’t hurt anybody because the soldiers didn’t want them anyway.

  He told her about the drivers who would deliver twenty-one pigs to the wholesalers and be given a receipt for twenty. How the odd one would be sold, piece by piece. For a lot of money. It was big business. Nasty business.

  ‘But what about tonight?’

  He told her about the police swoop on marketeers in March designed to end the racketeering. About the major roadblocks around London and other cities. About the lorries and vans the police searched for eggs, meat, poultry. He told her about the market stalls being raided. He told her that the police were still stopping and searching anyone who seemed suspicious. That it was a dangerous time to be out and about if it looked as though you were up to anything shady.

  ‘But what about tonight?’

  He asked her if she remembered Jones who had owned their houses. Jones was getting very flash, he said, because he took people’s money for black-market produce like that extra piece of pork – and only sometimes delivered the goods. He also pinched produce from the local allotments, but they could find no proof. Last of all, he had taken two cheeses from a farm where the neighbourhood owned two cows and had a cheese club.

  ‘Sure I remember him, now what about tonight?’ She grabbed him now, turning him to her, laughing, and it was the first time she had done that for so long.

  ‘Tonight we are not banging door knockers, we are not cutting up sleepers for fuel and selling it, we are not making cigarettes out of dog-ends. Tonight we are breaking into a warehouse owned by Jones and taking two of his cheeses. You, me, Sam and Ted. All the gang. We’re taking back what’s ours. Are you coming?’

  He was still facing her, his eyes serious, though his mouth was smiling. She thought of the lake, but all that was slipping away from her. Just for now, it was more distant.

  She thought of Grandpa, the police action Jack had just explained. ‘We could get caught?’ He voice was serious.

  ‘Yes.’ He didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes, we could. It might be big trouble.’

  ‘Does this cheese really belong to the street or is it all for money?’

  ‘No. The cheese is ours. We’re sick of getting taken for a ride, and being pushed around.’

  She smiled, walking on now, hearing him catch her up.

  ‘When do we start?’ she said because she knew all about being pushed around.

  It was dark when she left the house. She had bathed in the tin bath as she said she would and felt better. She wore a loose dress, it was so hot.

  They met outside Jack’s and walked quietly, neither speaking until they reached the end of Middle Street, then cut across to Vernon Terrace, up the alley, down to Futcher’s Walk, picking up the others, picking up Sam. Nothing was said as they approached the wall which ran round the warehouse.

  There were dogs but Jack knew them and called to them quietly. Then he was bunked up and over by Sam who shot Ted up too. Sam went next, the others after. She was to be look-out. Sam would wait the other side of the wall to relay any warning.

  A cyclist approached and Rosie walked slowly on, then back again when he had overtaken. She listened and looked and wished they would goddamn hurry. She thought of Grandpa asleep, of Norah too. She thought of Joe and Sandra, Frank and Nancy, but still she looked and listened for over half an hour and again wished they’d hurry because she was out here on her own.

  There were sounds now, the soft bark of a dog, voices, and Jack called, ‘All clear?’

  It was, and so he threw one cheese, then the other, then scrabbled over himself. It had all been so easy. She had proved herself to Sam, to them all.

  But then they saw the police, walking towards them, dipping in and out of the lamplight, and Jack grabbed her, told her to run, told the others to stay – for Christ’s sake stay behind the wall.

  She felt her fear and his. She thought of Grandpa, and then of Sam, and now the fear was gone. She turned to Jack.

  ‘No, put your arm round me, kiss me.’

  He looked at her, then at the police. He ducked his head and kissed her with soft lips and she hugged him, turning her back, pushing the cheeses up inside her dress, and then they walked towards the police. Everything was quiet, all they could hear were the footsteps walking in time towards them. She didn’t know if they had seen. She didn’t know if a hand would grip her shoulder and her Grandpa would know what she had been doing.

  She held her stomach, walking with legs slightly apart, feeling Jack’s arm around her. It too was tense, trembling, and then she started to cry, asking him why they couldn’t marry, especially with the baby due so soon. She clutched the cheeses to her.

  They were level with the police now and Rosie turned her face into his shoulder. It was warm, as Joe’s had been.

  ‘Just don’t leave me, that’s all. If you won’t marry, don’t leave me.’

  The police looked away, embarrassed, and Jack held her closer, his breath warm in her hair, and his arm was relaxed, warm now because they hadn’t been stopped yet, and maybe they wouldn’t be. He held her close and said that he would stay for ever, but she must eat more calcium, more cheese. Then they were well past the police and near the corner.

  ‘Oh Jack,’ she said, ‘I know the baby will look just like you.’ And now they were round the corner and running, laughing.<
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  That night she lay in bed, hearing Jack’s voice, feeling his lips on hers. Sam had bought her a ginger beer. Ted had said it would be bad for the baby. She had laughed with them. The anger in them had eased because they had taken what was theirs and she knew she could do that too. She could take back the future which had seemed to be hers until last month. She would have her journalism, somehow, and she would start tomorrow.

  Welcome back, Jack had said when she told him.

  CHAPTER 4

  The next day Rosie enrolled at evening secretarial classes which would begin in late September. Frank had joined his paper as a cub reporter after teaching himself shorthand and typing. If college hadn’t been necessary for him, it wouldn’t be for her.

  September was too long to wait, though, so she brought home a shorthand book from the library because she was working towards her future now, this very day. It was the only way she would survive the loss, the separation from that other world, those other people she still loved, still grieved for even though she had Grandpa, the gang, and Jack.

  July turned to August which was heavy with heat and with rain too, but by then Rosie had learned the rudiments of shorthand on her own late at night in her room, though she still had no speed. But it would come. Goddamn it, it would come. She would make sure it did.

  The weather didn’t matter during the day either because she had coaxed Mrs Eaves into letting her play Bix Beiderbecke through the speakers so that his mellifluous cornet-playing filled the store. But only once a day, Mrs Eaves, the supervisor, had said, jangling the keys on the belt of her overalls, leaning across the mahogany counter, because the public prefer the Andrews Sisters, Glenn Miller – the romantic, the slick.

  So too did Norah, but Rosie didn’t care so much about that now that she knew. Norah had not had such a bad war. She had pranced around, showing off, drinking tea with a cocked little finger, putting the milk in last.

  ‘So why lie?’ Rosie had asked Jack.

  He had shrugged and so she had asked Norah that same day, leaning on the rectangular counter, talking quietly so that the other assistants could not hear.