At the Break of Day (45 page)

She looked at his hand on her arm and then at him. He dropped his hand.

Rosie said, ‘I’ve packed your bags. They’re in the café, by the counter. I’m surprised you didn’t see them.’

His lips were thin now and there was no love in his face. There never had been, she could see that now. ‘If you do this I’ll tell them about Lucia. I’ll tell Bob to turn down Luke.’ Joe was shouting, gripping her arm again.

Such short clean nails, suitable for the Lake Club. So very suitable. She moved away and again his hand dropped as she picked up his mac. It was still cold, damp and smelt of Joe. It meant nothing to her.

‘Get out, Joe. I can’t trust you, so there’s nothing left.’

‘I only wanted you so I’d get the paper.’ He was spitting out the words, his shoulders rigid, his hands clenched into fists.

‘And I’ve used you too, and I’m sorry,’ Rosie said, holding the door, nodding to him as he stood there, large in this small room where he was now an intruder. ‘Please go now, Joe.’

He started to say, ‘You’re a bitch …’ but then stopped, shaking his head. ‘Rosie, can’t we …?’

She shook her head, handing him his mac. He snatched it from her, turned, flung it at the window, driving a glass ashtray to the floor. It broke and only then did he leave, his mac lying crumpled on the sill.

Rosie quietly closed the door, knelt and picked up the splinters. She wouldn’t need an ashtray now. She didn’t smoke. Grandpa was right. Second best was no good.

She carried the broken glass through to the kitchen in Joe’s mac, dropped them in the bin, then stood at the window listening to the sounds of the streets, to a soft cough from Lucia. Yes, he was right, it was better to be alone.

Rosie wrote to Frank and Nancy, telling them that she and Joe had quarrelled, that the report about Luke would be bad, but that
she
vouched for the band. Please would they tell Bob that? She also said that the Festival feature had been her idea. Joe had copied it.

She didn’t tell them about Lucia because Joe might not and they had enough heartache now. And she had enough too.

In April she went again to Middle Street and slipped in through the back gate at a time when Mrs Eaves said Norah would be out. She pruned the roses, cutting them back to the healthy buds. She returned to Soho, and bought three rose plants from the market, planting them out in pots in Mario’s yard. These were in recognition that the past had gone. There was to be no more waiting for anyone.

In May Frank and Nancy wrote to her, full of love, full of guilt at what they saw as their betrayal of her. They could not write fully until Joe returned from the POW camps where the North Koreans and Chinese were housed. Things were supposed to be bad there, he said. When Joe arrived in Lower Falls in the summer they would tell her what had been decided for that young man.

In the summer Frank wrote to her:

Lower Falls
June 1952

My dearest Rosie,

We have spoken to Joe. He no longer works for the paper. I now write again under my own name. There has been enough subterfuge. It’s time I got out there fighting again. McCarthy can’t go on for ever. When the Korean war ends my guess is that he will lose his appeal. All this talk about betrayal by the leadership because of the reverses and then the stalemate is just too easy to spout.

God giving that man a mouth was like giving a lunatic a gun.

The report on Luke was bad. Yours has over-ridden it. Bob trusts you.

But now I write about really important things. The first being that I know now that I am a grandfather. Joe told us. How can you think that this would bring anything other than joy? How can you think that it would have made our problems worse? We love you. We shall love Lucia. But your pain is our pain.

Think carefully, Rosie. Joe vouched for the news he brought about Jack’s love affair. I have checked the POW list. He is on that but that doesn’t mean the rest is true. Give him the benefit of the doubt where love is concerned. Just wait until the end of the war when you will know one way or the other. Please. I know it is what your Grandpa would want.

Incidentally, we are coming over to see you in July.

Frank

The year had passed slowly; tortuously slowly. The lectures didn’t change as 1952 slipped into 1953, neither did the nature of the seasons. The cold was extreme, the spring came with its usual glorious explosions of colour.

‘Exquisite,’ Steve said and they remembered Nigel, but Steve couldn’t really see the colour. The lack of vitamins had given him twilight blindness. He groped his way if Jack wasn’t with him, and he didn’t sleep because he thought he would never write now.

The Doc said he would. That vitamins would reverse the situation.

‘But when will he be able to have those, Doc?’ Jack had asked.

‘When this lot is over.’

But no one knew when that would be. Sometimes they doubted that it would ever happen.

The peace talks continued. New prisoners, conscripts who had not volunteered, told them so. The newcomers told them about the guns which blasted from the trenches and showered shrapnel and earth on to the men of both sides. It was trench warfare again. In this age of great might, they had returned to static trench warfare.

Conditions improved again as the blossom bloomed on the trees. The men were given two larger meals a day, with rice and soya beans. Once a week they had a piece of pork. There was steamed bread, Korean turnip, cabbage leaves which Jack made Steve eat raw because Maisie had always said that cooking boiled the vitamins away. They also had potatoes now.

Jack told Steve how he had picked potatoes in Somerset, how Rosie’s grandpa had grown some one year in a bucket in the yard. They had been small and translucent and good enough to eat on their own.

There were no letters from Rosie. Steve had none either though he was sure his mother would have written. Some men had letters, though, and between the news of births and deaths the words which cut deepest were those of everyday life. The sink that was cracked. The bulbs that had been planted before they left. The bike that was rusted.

Jack wrote about all this with a journalist’s eye. ‘Keep at it. You’ll do well,’ another American whose father was a Sub-Editor on the
Washington Post
said when Steve showed him.

Each day they threw stones at the marker, because why should they change the ritual of their life, just because one of them no longer saw clearly, Jack asked? He forced his friend to concentrate while he gave him instructions. ‘Same direction, not so hard this time.’ Jack told Steve that as long as he could still hit the marker he would also be able to write.

‘Just you wait and see. You’ll use all these months, these years. The times in the pit, the times when the blossom has bloomed and filled us with wonder, and one day you’ll win the Pulitzer Prize.’

Steve threw another stone, hitting the target. He aimed in exactly the same direction for his next throw.

‘There you are, and just you wait, it’ll be over soon. You’ll get those vitamins.’

But would it soon be over?

It was for Steve. In April 1953 the North Koreans agreed to repatriate a number of wounded and ill prisoners and they included Steve on the list that they called out at roll-call. They included Bob too because dysentery had taken its toll of the older man and a stomach ulcer was suspected.

Jack scribbled a note to Rosie and gave it to Bob to post. It was hurried because the trucks were already pulling in. The men had thirty minutes to grab their belongings and say their farewells. As the others were being helped to the truck Steve hugged Jack, slapped his back. They held one another and couldn’t bring themselves to say goodbye until the guard started shouting at them, pulling at Steve to move.

‘See you, bud,’ Steve said. ‘I almost don’t want to go. Don’t want to leave you. It’s been so long. But I’ll see you.’

‘You will. You get those vitamins inside you and you goddamn will,’ Jack said, helping him up into the truck.

They clasped hands as the truck jerked away. Jack ran along behind waving to Bob, waving to Steve, watching as the mud spun from the wheels, swallowing his envy and his loss, wondering how he could go on without his American who was more than a friend, who had known the horrors of the pit alongside him. Who had defecated in the corner of the same rail-truck, who had washed Jack’s rags when he had dysentery. Whose rags Jack had washed in turn.

He turned away as the truck eased into the haze and now the Sergeant shouted at him and the others. He lined them up. Told them that they were a motley shower, a bloody disgrace to their countries and he didn’t want to see any long faces. Their friends had left. Soon they would all leave this godforsaken country, and they would leave with their spirits intact, their health intact, even if he had to break their bloody necks.

‘And don’t you forget it,’ he bellowed. ‘Dismiss.’

Throughout April the routine remained the same as it always had been and the men stopped looking up each time the Commandant left his house outside the compound. Nothing had changed. They weren’t going home, yet.

The days were lonely now for Jack. He threw pebbles at the marker. He sat through lectures, using them to sharpen up his précis. Using them to dream of Rosie. Using them to rest. They were all so thin and tired and more fell ill with beri-beri but no more were shipped out.

Jack remembered the train ride to Pyongyang and feared that the same trick had been played again and maybe Steve would be trucked back. He didn’t return though as April turned into May. In the camp they were given sleeping bunks, chairs and tables. Razors, mirrors, combs, nail-clippers, toilet bags, cigarettes, wine and beer. They shaved away the unkempt beards and looked almost young again.

The food had improved so much that the British were more able to play soccer, the Americans to play baseball. Jack wondered if Frank still had the target on the garage that Rosie had told him about.

Each day he threw pebbles at the marker because it was part of his routine and then he squatted in the compound and listened as the Americans threw, batted, ran.

‘Now whad’ya gonna do, batter, batter?’ was the chant from the supporters.

‘Stay loose, baby, stay loose.’

‘Whad’ya say? Whad’ya say?’

But solitary confinement still continued too and manual labour outside the compound: hauling logs, unloading trucks, digging channels – and the wood detail, the never-ending chopping of wood.

Peking Radio’s English broadcasts continued too, including interviews with those UN troops who had turned, and although most of the men in the camp scarcely listened, the tone of the reports was different and some of them became convinced that the end was near. But Jack, and those who had been with him, could not forget the train journey to Pyongyang and refused to think of home.

On 27 July their Sergeant lined them all up at 1400 hours and, as the sun beat down on the compound square, the Commandant addressed the camp in Chinese.

‘The bugger,’ breathed Jack, because he knew the Commandant spoke English well. There was a pause.

Then the interpreter said, ‘Both sides in the Korean war have agreed to a cease-fire to take effect from now. You will be returned to your own side.’

There were cameramen with the camp staff and Jack knew that they were there to record the scenes of joy, but none of the prisoners moved. They looked at the Sergeant and waited.

He gave his orders. They obeyed. Attention. About turn, quick march. Back to their huts, denying their captors any emotion. Denying themselves any as they sat on their beds and wondered if this was another trick.

One week later, in pouring rain, trucks came and took them to the railhead. They travelled in cattle wagons until they reached another camp. They lived beneath canvas for another two days eating beans and rice. Jack would not believe that he was going home and neither would many of the others.

Small groups departed each evening. Red Cross observers were there now. Jack watched the yellow moon push up over the mountain crest. Where were they going? Back to the camp? Even with the Red Cross he could not bring himself to believe.

But then it was his turn. He pulled himself up into the truck and wished that Steve was here and Nigel, Tom, Bob. And still he couldn’t believe. He couldn’t feel. A Chinese Captain stood in the rain, urging them to turn from the warmongering capitalists and stay where there was truth.

Jack said, for Steve, for Tom, for Nigel, ‘Why don’t you take a powder.’

They drove into Freedom Village three days later and passed lorry after lorry taking Communist POWs back north.

There’s nothing left for you up there now, Jack thought, the ruined countryside still raw in his mind. It was the people that suffered, always.

They drove into the encampment beneath a ‘Welcome Home’ arch and slipped down from the lorry. Someone directed them towards doctors who examined them, then on to the interrogators, who examined them. Then on to the psychiatrists who gave them ice-cream, and examined them.

‘I just want to get home,’ Jack said, because now he believed it and the joy was racing through him. He had been asked to fill in too many forms, been asked too many questions for it not to be the truth. It was over. He was going home. He was bloody well going home.

A woman in WVS uniform came to him as he sat on his bunk. She gave him a shirt and sat and talked to him. It was too long since he had heard a woman’s voice, too long since someone had done up the buttons on his shirt, and his eyes filled with tears.

‘It’s so long since I’ve seen Rosie,’ he said to the woman and then he cried.

The next day he boarded the troop ship, felt the wind in his hair and stood by the rail, with so many others who were too thin, too old, to be twenty-three.

‘It was exquisite,’ he called out as the ship left, not caring about the looks from those at his side. He was saying goodbye to Nigel and to Tom. ‘It was goddamn exquisite.’ And he was crying again, the tears smeared across his cheeks.

The year had passed slowly for Rosie too. Frank and Nancy had come in the summer of ’52. They had held Lucia, they had held Rosie. They walked in the park, they looked at the ruins, at the rosebay willowherb which covered some still-unfilled craters. They gazed at the re-building which was slow, very slow. They took her to shows, to restaurants where there was still a maximum price. They went back with her to Somerset but not to Herefordshire because she must go there alone one day.