At the Break of Day (5 page)

‘I’m back from the cowboys, didn’t you know?’ she whispered. ‘Didn’t you know? Why didn’t you meet me?’ His eyes were brown as they had always been, his smile the same.

He picked her up now, swung her round.

‘Where are your plaits? I’ve always thought of you with your plaits. Where are you going to bung your rubber bands now?’

It was so good to feel his arms, hear his voice, see the hair which still fell across his forehead, because he was her friend. He had always been her friend. She laughed and cried and held him close and he put his arms round her.

‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he said and it was almost more than she could bear.

He pulled her back towards the cab. ‘I didn’t know you were coming back.’ He squeezed her hand then dropped it as they reached the cab.

‘But Frank cabled Norah to tell you.’

‘Then it’s your own bloody fault I never got the message. You should have known better.’ He was heaving at one end of the trunk and they had it up, and he and the driver went down the alley between the houses, through the alley at the back where the gutter was damp from the drizzle which had now stopped.

Jack was so tall, his shoulders were wide and his body was thick. He looked more than sixteen. He sounded more. His voice was deep like Joe’s but there wasn’t the tan, there wasn’t the soft quality of the clothes, of her clothes. He was like England, worn and tired. Norah was right. It hadn’t been fair that she had missed all this. She turned and looked at the crumpled skyline of the houses backing on to the alley.

They were at the back gate and she didn’t want to go in, she held it for them because the yard was home and she couldn’t go in, not yet, because Grandpa was in there, and he hadn’t come to meet her, he hadn’t even stayed awake. He had just dragged her home and she thought she hated him even though he had once loved her so much and she had loved him.

They walked back to the taxi. She paid the fare, tipped half a crown and didn’t care what Jack thought, even if it was ‘bloody Yank’. He said nothing, though, and she watched the taxi drive away, leaving her here. Her journey was over. She turned to Jack, to his warmth and his smile, and looked at the hands which had written her letters when others hadn’t.

‘So where
are
you going to put your rubber bands then?’ He was leaning back against the wall, putting his hands in his pockets, sloping one leg over the other.

‘Round my little finger, I guess,’ Rosie said, leaning back on the lamppost which threw light into Grandpa’s bedroom.

‘Will Woolworths like that, I ask myself?’

‘Woolworths will have to get stuffed if they don’t,’ Rosie answered, looking up into the sky where a weak sun was filtering through.

The sun would throw sloping shadows across the lawn tomorrow. It would glitter on the lake. Nancy would wear goggles to sunbathe. Frank would fish.

‘Are you glad you’re back?’ Jack asked.

‘Now you’re here,’ Rosie said, and flushed because the boy she had known was gone and this half-stranger was in his place. ‘Can I come and see your mum?’

She said this because he had blushed too and she felt awkward and wanted to include his family in her feelings, in her words. She loved his mum anyway. She was full-breasted like Nancy, and kind too.

Jack took out his cigarettes, ducking his head down to catch the flame of the match. Something was different between them. Had there been too many years? Too many miles? Had they grown too far apart to be friends? But that could never happen, not for her anyway. This was the boy who had swung her at the rec, who had beaten her at flicksies, helped her tie string to all the knockers in the street, then pulled them with her, heard the knocks. This was the boy who had run whooping through the streets with her when their neighbours had come to their doors, shouting and swearing at them. Who had written.

‘Make it tomorrow,’ Jack said, pushing himself up from the wall. ‘Come and see me on the stall first, down Malvern Lane. We’ll talk, catch up. Things aren’t the same in there.’ He nodded to his house, his face angry, and then he smiled. ‘Get in there and see your grandpa. He’s been waiting. He’s missed you.’

He sauntered off, nodding at her, not going into his house but on down the street. Then he stopped and called back, ‘Got any gum, chum?’

‘Sure, a goddamn trunkful,’ she called back.

He walked on. Then turned again. ‘Glad you’re back, Rosie. I would’ve met you. We’ve only grown, we ain’t changed, you know. Not really. Tomorrow then.’

The hallway was dark and so small and there was no sound in the house. No Bix Beiderbecke, no Erroll Garner, no New Orleans with the banjo cutting through the jumble of sounds, keeping the rhythm going. Rosie stood still, her hands on the wallpaper. It was the same; she could feel the pattern running on down beneath her fingers. She had done this when she left. She remembered now.

She thought of the houses she had passed on the train, with their rooms hanging open to the world, wallpaper torn and flapping. That could have been this house. Her grandpa could have been one of those who died, and she pushed open the door into the room where they cooked and washed and lived because she couldn’t bear the thought of that and knew now that she still loved him.

There he was, sitting at the table with the brown chipped teapot in front of him. It was the one Grandma had bought. So that hadn’t changed. But, dear God, he had. He turned as she entered.

‘Rosie, you’re here. I didn’t know when you were coming, if you were coming. I couldn’t rest. I’ve waited all week for you.’

Somehow she smiled, put down her bags, her jacket and walked towards him, her hands held out. He stood and pulled her to him, holding her close. Her arms were round this man who had once been strong and firm, who had held her with nailmaker’s arms and told her he loved her. He was thin, and so small, so old with an old man’s smell and he had always been so clean.

She looked past him to Norah. You bitch, she thought, you’ve just lied to me, you lied to him, kept my cable from him. You black-hearted bitch.

‘I’m sorry, my Rosie.’ His voice was cracked, stumbling, and his words were loose, clumsy, as he whispered, ‘I’m sorry for bringing you back. Norah wanted you here and I promised your grandma you’d come home. I thought you’d want to. Norah said you’d think we didn’t want you back, if we let you stay. Sometimes I can’t think straight, like I used to.’

She held him, remembering how much she had loved him, knowing how much she still did.

Norah was washing dishes in soda, her head up, listening for the words Rosie knew Grandpa did not want her to hear.

‘I love you, Rosie. I couldn’t have you thinking we didn’t want you back,’ he repeated.

‘I know, I know,’ she soothed because the man was now the child and that hurt more than all the pain so far. ‘I love you too.’

Rosie moved back, holding his hand, guiding him on to the chair again, pulling another round to sit at the table with him. He wouldn’t release her hand. His joints were loose, his face long, his jaw slack and he had no bottom teeth.

‘I’ve sure missed you, Grandpa. Every day. I guess I couldn’t wait to get home, to you.’ A lie, but what did it matter.

Norah banged down a cup she was washing on the draining board. ‘Took your time, then. Planning to stay for more school. That wasn’t fair. I told him so.’

You talk too goddamn much, Rosie wanted to say, but she didn’t because Grandpa didn’t move, didn’t say anything, just dropped his head and Rosie rubbed the back of his big veined hands, touching the swollen knuckles with her fingers.

‘Woolworths not good enough for you, then? It suits me.’ Norah was wiping the cup with a teatowel.

Rosie sat back. ‘Woolworths will be fine. Just fine. I can’t think of anything I would rather do, Norah.’ But she wanted to say, You still got that dandy fox fur? You must think you’re the tops waltzing in wearing that, but she didn’t because Norah had been left behind and no matter what she’d said or done since, it wasn’t fair. And that was that.

Norah turned back, tucking the edge of the towel into the cutlery drawer beneath the drainer.

‘You’d better get down to the Food Office tomorrow to get your ration book. You’re eating our points.’ She gestured to the pan on the old gas oven. ‘Put that on the table.’

Rosie wanted to tip the pan upside-down on that prissy perm but instead she smiled at Grandpa, who brought out a handkerchief with a trembling hand and raised it to his mouth, wiping the corners, putting it away again carefully. So careful, so slow; like his writing had looked, but she hadn’t noticed.

Too many years had passed and Rosie saw the old brownstones as she fetched the pan full of mashed potatoes. She looked for a bowl.

‘Put it on the table in the pan. Or have you forgotten how we live?’

Rosie flushed. There was nothing she could say because she had.

‘I’ve got tins of ham in the trunk. Shall I go get them?’ She moved towards the door.

‘No, the Spam’s cut. We’ll save the ham for something special.’

So there we are, Rosie thought as she sat down. I’m home. I sure am home. But she wouldn’t cry, not here, and she reached again for Grandpa’s hand. Now she was here she remembered the room and it hadn’t changed. Along one wall were all Grandpa’s books. He’d read each one and had wanted her and Jack to do the same, but she’d run out of time, and so had Jack. Norah had refused to read them.

She looked round as she cut the pink Spam, eating it with mashed potatoes but no salad. The dresser was the same, the bread board, the bread knife with the burned handle, the worn lino, and there were no cockroaches, maybe no bed bugs. There was a bed in the room though, the folding one that her mother had slept on whilst her father used the chair.

She turned to Norah. ‘Is that my bed?’

Norah pointed her knife at Grandpa. ‘No, it’s his. He has accidents. It’s not worth soiling a proper bed and he can reach the privy quicker.’

Grandpa continued to chew but flicked a glance at Rosie, then reached for his handkerchief and wiped his lips, again.

Rosie talked then about the trip over, the train, the damage, the bombs. She talked of anything and everything because she couldn’t bear to see the shame in Grandpa’s eyes, to hear that voice slashing and wounding as it had always done. The war had changed nothing in Norah.

Norah ate on, chewing, drinking her water, not listening. Rosie knew she wasn’t listening but at least she wasn’t speaking.

Grandpa rose and walked to the back door, out to the privy. ‘Won’t be a moment,’ he said.

Norah continued to eat. Rosie talked then of New York’s rundown East Side, the ‘lung blocks’, those tenements which gave their people TB.

‘Like Mum and Dad,’ she said. ‘If we hadn’t had Grandma and Grandpa, what would we have done? He was just great to us.’

‘They wouldn’t have been working in the laundry anyway if he’d stayed in Bromsgrove.’ Norah pointed her knife at the yard. ‘What was wrong with being a nailer? He goes on about it enough. Grandma didn’t want to come down. She told me.’

Rosie said, ‘Grandma was always complaining. You couldn’t take anything she said seriously and you’ve got awful like her. You’ve got a tongue like a …’ but Grandpa came back and so she hurried on and spoke of the hop-picking they’d done in the years before the war. The sun, the smell, the fun.

‘Couldn’t go to Kent like the rest though, could we? Had to be up in Malvern because that’s where the Midlanders used to go.’ Norah didn’t look up as she spoke, just hooked a piece of mash at the corner of her mouth with her tongue. ‘Why couldn’t we be the same as everyone else? That’s what I want to know.’

Rosie cut in. ‘So, how was Somerset then, Norah? Did you settle in?’ She wanted to draw that sour tongue away from the old man who had sent her away and then brought her back, but only because he thought it best for her. She knew that now. She had always known it really, but the anger was still there, inside her, mingled with the pain.

‘Not as good as America. Country life is hard. I skivvied, worked my fingers to the bone.’

Rosie looked at her. ‘Got enough flesh on you now then, Norah, you could slip on a marble any day and not break that goddamn backside.’

No one was eating now. Norah sat back, her eyes dark with rage, her mouth closed into a thin line. Then she finished her potatoes, stabbing them with the fork. Rosie took the plates, washed them in the kettle water. It was nearly dark now and the cracked clock above Grandpa’s bed said nine o’clock.

‘I’ve got presents in the trunk,’ Rosie said, turning, leaning back on the sink. ‘A great nightdress and stockings for you, Norah, a sweater for you, Grandpa.’ Her voice was conciliatory. She must try again if they were to live together. She must keep telling herself that, because Norah had suffered, while she hadn’t.

Norah was reading a magazine at the table but she looked up now.

‘You’re sleeping in the boxroom. I’ve got the front bedroom.’

Of course you’ve got the goddamn front room, Rosie thought, and I bet that goddamn fox fur is hanging on the back of the door, his goddamn eyes glinting, but she said nothing.

She pushed open the door into the yard and took Grandpa’s arm, feeling him lean on her as she helped him to the bench under the kitchen window. The air was full of the fragrance of his roses.

She put the newspaper on the bench which was still damp and then they sat, neither speaking, for what was there to say? So much, too little.

‘Of course he wouldn’t dig up his precious yard to put in a shelter. It would have disturbed the roses,’ Norah called through the door.

Rosie put her hand on Grandpa’s. ‘Quite right too,’ she said quietly.

‘Wouldn’t go down to the shelter in Albany Street either. He wouldn’t sleep with strange people. Got to be different.’

‘I like my privacy,’ Grandpa said loudly now.

‘I guess we all do,’ Rosie nodded, patting his hand, glad that he was answering Norah, jerking his head up, sticking his chin out. Glad too that she need not sleep in the same bed with that girl ever again.

She leaned forward, smelling the dark red cottage rose which was growing well in the raised bed which Grandpa had built years ago. There was a trailing pink clambering up the privy.