At the Break of Day (8 page)

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.

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.

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.

Norah had flared with anger. ‘I’m not lying,’ she said, ‘not really. You had a much better time. It should have been me. I’m older.’

Perhaps, Rosie thought now as she ticked records off against the stocklist, Norah was still trying to adjust, to come to terms with leaving Somerset. Perhaps she yearned for the people who had been her family for that time. If so, she understood and so she played the Andrews Sisters and smiled at Norah, who didn’t smile back.

Rosie turned as a customer, a woman in a felt hat, asked for ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’.

‘It’s sure nice. I really like Glenn Miller,’ Rosie said as she wrapped it. Grandpa did too. He had heard it on the wireless and tapped his foot as he read
Silas Marner.
Rosie had laughed and told him that she would try to buy a gramophone and he could bop to Duke Ellington. He had stopped having accidents now. There had been no soiled sheets, no embarrassed lowering of the eyes, and he even wanted to hear of her evenings at the Palais with the gang.

She told him how she and Jack jitterbugged around the floor, feet moving fast, swirling in and then out, up and over his hip, his shoulder, while the MC shook his head, tapped them on the shoulders and pointed to the sign on the wall:
ABSOLUTELY NO JITTERBUGGING ALLOWED
.

They didn’t stop. No one stopped. They all danced. The war was over. They had all fought it, Rosie too, Jack said. They all bore the scars. He could see hers, he had told her, in her eyes, and they were still fresh, but they would go. One day they would go. And we’re alive so we’ll jitterbug like the others and no one will tell us we can’t. So they jitterbugged and it kept the shadows and the pain away.

But there were nights when Ollie lurched home drunk and there was shouting and banging to be heard through the walls. On these nights Jack didn’t come dancing, he stayed behind to stand between Maisie, Lee and Ollie. It wasn’t the same without him. Dancing with Sam and Ted, Dave and Paul didn’t stop her wanting Frank and Nancy. It didn’t stop her wanting Maisie and Ollie as they had been before the war. It didn’t stop her wanting a much earlier time when there had been no pain or anger in Jack’s eyes. And it made her think of Joe.

Rosie tipped the Beiderbecke record back into its sleeve. Her legs ached. There was no air in the shop and the heat was thick about her. She longed for a draught or the cool of the evening. She pulled her burgundy overall away from her back and then stood still. Nancy had said it was the best way of cooling down. It did no good to fret. Maisie had said that too last night when at last she had come round and Rosie stood still now, thinking of Maisie’s plump arms, so like Nancy’s.

For a moment it had been like Pennsylvania again but then Nancy had never smelt of lavender. Maisie did, always had done, Rosie realised as she was pulled against that warm, plump woman who had pushed open the yard gate as she and Grandpa were hugging mugs of tea between their hands and breathing in the roses.