She thought of how her mother had wanted to know about each of the lodgers last night – how old they were, where they came from, and what they did for a living. Rose hadn’t been able to tell her, for she knew practically nothing about any of them. Today she hadn’t even asked Margery where her parents lived.
Rose had never before thought it might be a failing to have so little interest in other people, but perhaps it was. Maybe Margery, Sonia and other tenants both past and present could only view her as a rent collector, not a woman on her own who might need company. Perhaps, too, all those people down at the pub saw her as an independent woman who had no room in her life for them?
All at once she realized she didn’t have any real friends. She had dozens of acquaintances, she could walk into any one of half a dozen pubs in London and be greeted by someone she knew. But that wasn’t real friendship, only the camaraderie of heavy drinkers. Who would mourn her if she were to die tonight?
If Adele had told Honour about Michael today, neither of them would give a damn if she was reported killed. And none of the many men in Rose’s past life would either, for if they remembered her at all it would only be of how she used them.
‘Mrs Harris! Can you hear me?’
Honour could hear a female voice, but there was a lot of other noise behind it, the way it was at a noisy party or in a railway station. She couldn’t seem to open her eyes, and she hurt, though she couldn’t quite make out where.
‘Mrs Harris! You were hurt in the air raid, but you’re safe now in hospital.’
Air raid! Hospital! Those words seemed to mean something but she couldn’t quite grasp what. Was this a dream? Should she try to wake up and let Towzer out?
‘Got to let Towzer out,’ she managed to say, and forced her eyes open enough to see bright lights.
‘That’s better,’ the voice said. ‘We found your name on an envelope in your handbag, Mrs Harris. Do you live in London or is the address in Sussex your home?’
Slowly Honour’s eyes began to focus and the blur in front of her became a face. A young, pretty face with dark brown eyes. She had a nurse’s starched cap on her head, just like Adele.
‘Is Adele here?’ she managed to croak out though her mouth seemed to be full of dust.
‘Adele who?’ the nurse asked.
‘Adele Talbot, my granddaughter. She’s a nurse.’
‘You’re Adele’s granny?’ the nurse said incredulously. ‘Oh my goodness.’
Honour was sure it was only a dream. She closed her eyes because the lights were too bright and slipped back to sleep.
‘Granny!’
The sound of Adele’s voice woke her immediately.
‘Adele?’
She couldn’t see her clearly, but the hand holding hers felt right. She didn’t need to talk now Adele was here, it was safe to drift off again.
Adele rushed over to the Ward Sister’s office when she left Honour’s bedside. She had been nursing patients recovering from operations all evening, so she hadn’t seen many of the casualties as they were brought into the hospital. It had been a terrible shock when Nurse Pople had come to her and broke the news that her grandmother was one of them. Adele had believed she was safely back in Hammersmith.
Yet it was even more frightening to see her lying there swaddled with bandages and to have the nurse tell her that they feared brain damage as she’d remained unconscious for so long.
Adele blurted out to Sister Jones that Mrs Harris was her grandmother. ‘Nurse Pople said she might have brain damage,’ she said. ‘Is that right?’
‘It’s too soon to tell yet,’ Sister said, and seeing the look of anguish on the young nurse’s face, she patted her shoulder in sympathy. ‘It’s an excellent sign that she was able to ask about you, but the head wound is bad, she also has a broken leg and countless lacerations to her body and limbs.’
‘She’s very strong and healthy,’ Adele said, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘That will help her, won’t it?’
‘Yes, nurse, of course it will, and being here in the same hospital as you too. Now, does she have a husband?’
‘No, she’s a widow,’ Adele said. ‘She’d been visiting someone in London, and left her dog there. But I don’t know the address.’
She couldn’t bring herself to admit the someone was her mother. Since Honour had informed her she’d stayed the night with Rose, Adele had been seething with anger that she’d had the cheek to try to worm her way back into their lives.
The Sister explained how she’d been through Honour’s handbag and found a letter. ‘I didn’t read it of course, but maybe you should, it might be from the person she stayed with. Now, how long have you been on duty, Talbot?’
‘The same as everyone else really,’ Adele said. ‘Since yesterday’s raid, and three hours off this morning. But I don’t want to go off now Granny’s here.’
Sister Jones looked at her sharply. ‘I shall insist you go off for a few hours later,’ she said. ‘Exhausted nurses make mistakes. Besides, there isn’t likely to be any change with Mrs Harris until at least tomorrow.’
When Adele went through Honour’s handbag and found the plaintive letter from Rose, she felt even more furious with her mother. It beggared belief that she would have the nerve to ask for forgiveness after the misery she had caused.
Maybe she didn’t expect Honour to jump on a train to London immediately, but to let her set off for the East End right after an air raid was criminal.
Adele knew what she’d like to do. Rush over to Hammersmith, snatch Towzer back and tell her mother in no uncertain terms that she never wanted to see or hear from her again. But she couldn’t leave the hospital, or Granny, nor could she look after Towzer until her grandmother was better.
She supposed she would just have to ask the police to notify Rose about what had happened, and trust that she had enough remnants of decency to take good care of Towzer.
Rose was woken by the door bell at eleven the following morning. She had stayed in the cellar until the all-clear went soon after dawn, but she hadn’t slept at all because she was so frightened. She took Towzer out for a short walk, and felt relieved to find there was no bomb damage to be seen around Hammersmith. She then went back to bed in her own room.
As she opened the front door and saw a uniformed policeman, she thought the worst and clutched her dressing-gown round her tightly.
‘Mrs Talbot?’ the policeman asked.
‘Yes,’ Rose said, her legs almost buckling under her.
‘I’m sorry to bring bad news, but your mother was injured in an air raid last night.’
Rose didn’t know what to say. She just stared at the policeman.
‘She’s in the London Hospital in Whitechapel. The message which we received early this morning was from your daughter who I understand is a nurse there. She reported that Mrs Harris has quite serious injuries but she is stable.’
‘But I’ve got her dog here,’ Rose said without thinking. ‘What shall I do?’
The policeman looked askance at her. ‘Take care of it until she’s better?’ he suggested with a touch of sarcasm.
‘But how long will that be?’ she asked.
‘You could try calling or visiting the hospital to find out,’ he said sharply.
Rose closed the door after the policeman had gone and walked slowly back into her flat. It took a few moments before what she’d just been told sank in, and several more moments before she realized that her reaction must have appeared callous. She stood at the back door, looking down the steps into her garden, and fumbled for her cigarettes in her dressing-gown pocket. Why had she said that about the dog? Now she’d given that policeman the impression that she cared more about getting shot of the animal than she did that her mother was hurt.
She lit the cigarette with shaking hands and drew deeply on it. All her life it had been the same, as if her mind didn’t work in tandem with her vocal chords. So many different men had called her a bitch because she’d blurted out something deeply hurtful under stress. Even when she was really trying to be kind or sympathetic, somehow she always managed to sound unfeeling.
The time she was most ashamed of was that night back when she was seventeen and her mother gave her the new blue dress she’d made.
The terrible things she said that night weren’t really about the dress, which was a sensible, serviceable one. But she was desperately in love with Myles, her whole being was crying out for romance, beauty and magic. The plain blue dress represented everything she despised about herself: being a waitress, living on the marsh, excluded from the glittering world she caught glimpses of at the hotel.
What she said that night to her mother and about her father was very nasty, but it was born out of frustration that she couldn’t improve her lot in life, and envy of those who had so much more than she did.
Afterwards, running away seemed to be the only thing she could do. She took whatever she could find of value in desperation, for she certainly wasn’t sure Myles would take her away with him, however much he wanted her. She had to tell him a pack of lies too, to make him agree. And she had to keep on lying even once she’d got to London with him.
Rose slumped down on the back steps and cried. She’d made such a mess of her life. All the way through it there had been crossroads, and at every single one she’d come to, she always took the route that looked easiest, the downhill way.
Two weeks passed before Rose went to the London Hospital to see Honour, leaving Towzer at home as she couldn’t take him into the hospital. She had telephoned the hospital daily, and felt relieved to hear from the Ward Sister that Honour was improving with each day. It was Sister who advised Rose not to visit, as Honour would only fret about her dog if Rose was to leave him on his own.
Rose was only too happy to take the Sister’s advice. She didn’t like hospitals and the thought of coming face to face with Adele was terrifying. She knew she was hostile or she would have left a message with a number and a time when she could be reached. On top of this there were the air raids. The daytime ones had stopped, but as soon as night fell there was a constant barrage of bombing. The BBC and the newspapers didn’t report on the extent of the damage and never mentioned the number of casualties, but everyone knew that the East End was devastated.
There had been enough bombs and incendiaries around Hammersmith for Rose to get the idea of what hell it must be in the East End. Each morning she saw new bomb damage close to her house, and as she queued to buy food she heard people talking about the worst-hit areas. It seemed that those who worked in the West End or the City often arrived at their office or shop to find the windows blown out or the roof caved in. They spoke of seeing huge holes in the street, piles of rubble, multicoloured telephone wires waving in the breeze, water and gas pipes fractured.
Rose was astounded that many people spent a sleepless night in a shelter, and then walked miles to work. And that many café and shop owners still opened for business, even when their windows had been blown out. She thought they were mad – neither the King nor the Government was going to reward anyone for being so dutiful. She just went home after tracking down some cigarettes and food. No one was going to press gang
her
into working on a tea stall or handing out clothes to those who’d been bombed out.
By the time two weeks had passed, Rose was sick and tired of staying home alone every night with Towzer. Her lodgers all went down to the public shelters and they seemed to have a real laugh there. So when she rang the hospital and the Sister said Honour was well enough to be moved out of London, Rose’s spirits lifted. She thought she might go up West once Towzer was gone, have a few drinks, and see if she could hook herself a new man. She was fed up with living like a nun, and by all accounts the West End was full of servicemen looking for a little fun.
As the Tube train sped along, Rose glanced disconsolately at her reflection in the train windows. Lack of sleep, anxiety and not eating properly had taken its toll, and though she’d taken great trouble with her appearance this morning, she looked her age. Yet looking around at her fellow passengers she was heartened to see they all looked far worse, grubby and shabby with gaunt faces.
‘Good morning, Mrs Talbot,’ Sister Jones said crisply as she came into the small waiting room Rose had been left in for over an hour.
Rose was in a state of shock at the scenes she’d witnessed since arriving at the hospital. Hundreds of people with every kind of gruesome injury took up every seat or floor area. One man still had shards of glass sticking out through his jacket, blood dripping on to the floor as he moved. A woman had been brought in on a stretcher, her features hidden by thick flourlike dust, and her leg partially severed. The sights were more than enough to turn Rose’s stomach, but the noise was even worse – crying, screaming, shouting and wailing. She might have turned tail and run if a nurse hadn’t ushered her into the relative quiet of this small room, but even that she was sharing with six other people in varying stages of distress.
‘Mrs Harris has recovered enough to be moved now, and of course we desperately need her bed,’ Sister said hurriedly without any preamble. ‘She wants to go home, but she’ll need someone to nurse her.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ Rose said indignantly. ‘I’ve got a boarding house to run.’
‘Nurse Talbot expected that would be your response,’ Sister retorted crisply. ‘She is of course more than willing to nurse her grandmother, but I need her here, we are desperately short of nurses.’
‘Where is she?’ Rose asked. She didn’t like the woman’s snooty tone one bit.
‘With a patient at present, but she knows you are here and will come to see you presently.’
‘I can’t wait here all day,’ Rose said belligerently. She knew she was being unpleasant, but she couldn’t help herself. Part of it was because she was scared stiff at the prospect of coming face to face with Adele.
The Sister gave her a searing look. ‘Some of the injured out there have already waited eight hours or more,’ she said with a wave of her hand towards the large waiting room beyond the small room. ‘They are in pain, desperate for news of their relatives, and most have lost their homes too. I suggest you start counting your blessings.’