There was another crack and the emergency lights went off, plunging them into total darkness. Rose heard the high-pitched scream of a child and Rosemary’s desperate shout and she realised that nothing was different. They were still trapped underground, the water was still rising and Rose was falling, down, down, down.
And then, nothing.
‘Rose? Is that you?’
Rose opened her eyes. She was lying on some sort of camp bed, covered in a rough blanket. There was a face looking down at her, dark eyes shining with amazement and delight.
‘Me and Betty have been so scared!’
It was Rosemary. She looked very different from the shocked, white-faced girl Rose had last seen on the platform of Balham station. She looked fresh and pretty and, although her lipstick was as bright as ever, her hair was tucked away under a neat little hat.
‘We thought you were—’ Rosemary stopped and shook away the thought. ‘What happened to you? Where have you been?’
‘I don’t know.’ Rose tried to get up. Her body ached all over, her clothes felt stiff and uncomfortable (she was still wearing her parka) and she suspected that she didn’t smell very nice. There were other camp beds lined up either side of hers and small wooden chairs against the walls. What was this place?
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ Rosemary had bustled away and was clattering about with some tea things that were arranged on a trolley at the other end of the room. Rose could see now that she was wearing some sort of uniform, quite smart, with a jacket and skirt as well as the hat.
‘The last thing I remember was Balham station.’
‘Balham?’ Rosemary stopped clattering to stare at her. ‘That was over two months ago!’
Two months ago? So time had moved on again.
‘We were lucky to get out.’ Rosemary bit her lip then changed the subject. ‘I’m in the WVS now!’ She indicated her uniform and struck a little pose, then realised from the look on Rose’s face that she didn’t know what she was talking about. ‘Women’s Voluntary Service? Serving tea and sympathy to the lost and wounded?’
Rose was still puzzled. ‘What date is it now then?’ she said.
‘It’s New Year’s Eve!’ Rosemary picked up a newspaper that was lying on one of the other camp beds and held it up to Rose. ‘1940? How come you don’t know that?’
There was a photograph on the paper’s front page, one that Rose had seen before, when they’d been doing the war at school. It was of St Paul’s Cathedral, its dome standing unharmed while everything around it was consumed by smoke and flames.
‘What happened that night?’ she said. ‘The night in Balham, I mean.’
‘You don’t know that either? They did hush it up, I suppose, didn’t want people to know how bad it was.’ Rosemary put down the teacup she was holding and took a deep breath. ‘Bomb went through the road above the station,’ she said. ‘Smashed the water main and the sewer.’ She shuddered at the memory. ‘That was why I took this up.’ She indicated her uniform and tried to smile. ‘Had to do something, you know? Singing to the people’s all very well but . . .’
And then she stopped and just stood there, with a funny little twisted smile on her face.
Rose could tell she was trying not to cry. She got up from the camp bed and went over and put her arms round her, like Mum used to when she was little and she was hurt or upset. Rosemary hid her face in Rose’s parka and heaved a great shuddering breath. Rose patted her back, not quite knowing what else to do.
‘Oh, Rose, it was so awful.’ Rosemary looked up at Rose’s face. ‘Over sixty people died that night. Sixty! A lot got out, but—’ She screwed up her mouth in an effort to stop the tears before she went on. ‘I knew some of them, the ones who were—’ She stopped, unable to say the word. ‘Not terribly well, but still. The lady from the butcher’s on the high street, she was ever so nice. A little boy from Betty’s school—’
‘What about Johnny?’ The words came out before Rose could stop them.
Rosemary turned and looked at Rose as if she was seeing her for the first time. She seemed unable to speak.
‘The boy we saved from the water?’ said Rose. ‘Did he get out OK?’
But Rosemary didn’t answer. ‘Johnny . . .’ she repeated the name carefully as if it was something precious. ‘Is that his name?’ She smiled to herself and Rose knew she was picturing his face. ‘It suits him.’
Rose nodded. ‘Like in your song.’
Their eyes met and the same smile crept across both their faces.
‘Do you know what happened to him, Rosemary?’
Rosemary forced herself back into the present with a little shake. ‘They took him away,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where. Hospital, I suppose. He was a hero that night, Rose. If he hadn’t arrived, just at that moment, and told me to go on singing like that, many more people would’ve been—’
‘But what about him?’ said Rose. ‘Do you think he was badly hurt?’
‘No! He just got a bump on the head, that’s all! Oh gosh, I don’t know! I’m never going to see him again, anyway.’
‘You don’t know that! Rosemary, you’ve got to—’
‘Miss Miles!’
An older woman had come in, her footsteps ringing busily on the wooden floor. She was wearing the same uniform as Rosemary and leading a younger woman with a white face whose right arm hung loose and helpless beneath her coat. A little boy with dirty knees was trailing along behind them, kicking at the floor and dragging his feet.
Rosemary jumped to attention. ‘Sorry, Mrs Pinker!’
‘Tea, please! Lots of sugar!’ called the woman. She had the kind of accent Rose remembered from the old British films she used to watch on television with Grandad on a Sunday afternoon. War films, they were mostly, but sometimes not. There was one called Brief Encounter which Rose had loved, full of trains and smoke and sadness. ‘And cocoa!’ added the woman, and turned to the boy. ‘That all right, young man?’
While Rosemary prepared the drinks, Rose looked around. The room felt somehow familiar, with its high windows and its smell of chalk and powder paint, damp clothes and unwashed hair. It was a smell that stirred all sorts of half forgotten memories in the depths of Rose’s brain . . . It was . . . it was . . .
Of course! It was the smell of a primary school. They were in a disused primary school, which obviously hadn’t been disused for very long. You could still see the marks on the walls where the children’s pictures had been pinned up and there were some old-fashioned desks with ink stains and hinged lids shoved away in one corner.
‘Miss Miles! What has happened to those drinks?’ The older woman was getting impatient.
‘Coming, Mrs Pinker!’
Rosemary hurried over with two steaming mugs, leaving Rose by the trolley, breathing in the smell of the children whose presence still hung about the old classroom like mist. She’d gone to a primary school like this, one of the old ones, built of red brick. She remembered the big iron radiators and the gritty, grey playground that hurt your knees when you fell over. In fact, this might even be the primary school she went to. She looked around, imagining herself sitting there with Grace and Ella, giggling and pinching each other while Mrs Lavis talked about long division and spelling and the Romans.
‘Are we still in Balham?’ she said as Rosemary came back.
‘What? Of course we’re still in Balham!’ Rosemary picked up a teaspoon and examined her reflection in it as if it was a tiny hand mirror. ‘Where else would we be?’
So it was her old school. Rose felt stupid tears prick her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I know it sounds weird.’
Rosemary sighed and put down the teaspoon. ‘No. I’m sorry. I’m tired. Listen. My shift finishes in a tick. Why don’t you come back with me?’
‘Back?’
‘Home. Nightingale Lane. Mother won’t mind and Betty would love it. She hasn’t stopped talking about you since that night when you followed us home from the tube. She thinks you’re an ang
el sent to look after us.’
Rose hesitated. ‘I don’t know . . .’
‘Oh, come on!’ Rosemary grabbed her arm and started bustling her over to the door. ‘What else are you going to do? You can’t stay here for ever. Cheerio, Mrs Pinker! See you Thursday!’
Mrs Pinker was bandaging the woman’s arm. She looked up and nodded as Rosemary and Rose went out into the icy brightness of the school playground. Everything was sparkling with frost. The clean icy smell reminded Rose of the last days of the autumn term, full of rehearsals and carols and parents coming into school.
‘It smells like Christmas,’ she said.
Rosemary breathed in the smell as they started to walk. ‘It does, doesn’t it? Wasn’t much of a Christmas for poor old Bets this year. No turkey, no crackers, no pud. Hardly any presents to speak of. Lucky she had your dog.’
Of course. Tommy was there, looking after Betty. Rose suddenly wanted to see him very much.
‘How is he?’ she said.
Rosemary grinned. ‘See for yourself!’ She nodded at the road ahead as they turned the corner into Nightingale Lane.
A bundle of black-and-white hairiness, skinny legs and wagging tail was flying along the pavement towards them in a great scrabble of claws and happiness. It was him. It was Rose’s Tommy.
‘Hello, hairy.’ She crouched down and buried her face in his fur, breathing in his dry doggy smell and trying not to cry.
‘Coseeeeeee!’ Betty came pounding up the pavement towards them, arms outstretched and plaits flying. She hugged her sister’s legs. ‘You’re back! And you’ve found the strange girl again!’ She looked up at Rosemary. ‘Is she coming home with us? To help look after Tommy?’
Rosemary grinned. ‘What do you think, Strange Girl? Are we taking you home?’
Rose looked up at them, the big sister and the little one who was now swinging off her sister’s legs as if she was a lamp post. She’d normally be embarrassed, find some excuse, if someone she didn’t really know asked her something like that. But this was different. This was her family. And there was a war on. So she nodded.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you. I’d like to come home.’
‘So you never saw him again?’
Rose was sitting on the bed in her old room at the back of the house in Nightingale Lane with Tommy at her feet. Except it wasn’t her room now. It was Rosemary’s. It didn’t look all that different actually. Instead of the stripped wooden floorboards, there was a sort of brownish lino on the floor, a bit worn in places, and a different cover on the bed, a faded thing printed with pinkish flowers. The old fireplace was still there, though, and the bed was in exactly the same place, along the wall opposite the window. Even the coldness of the white china doorknob in Rose’s hand had felt familiar.
‘After that night in Balham? No.’
Rosemary was getting changed. She’d taken off the heavy grey uniform she’d been wearing at the rescue centre and was now wearing a scratchy-looking old dressing gown over her slip while she rummaged about inside an unfamiliar dark wardrobe.
‘Brrr!’ Rosemary shivered. The room was chilly, in spite of the two bars of the electric fire that glowed red and made the room smell of electricity and hot dust.
‘But you think he was taken to a hospital?’ said Rose. ‘Did you never try and find out which one?’ It was so difficult to find someone, she thought, without phones and the internet and everything. How did anyone ever get to meet anybody more than once?
Rose stopped clattering about with coat hangers and swung round, holding a scarlet dress on a hanger in front of her like a shield. ‘No!’ She sounded outraged at the idea. ‘What do you think I am? We only met once! I’m not going chasing all over London looking for some boy, just because—’She stopped and bit her lip. They both knew what she had been going to say.
‘Because what?’
Rosemary shook away the words that hung in the air between them and turned back to the wardrobe.
‘Because you fell in love with him?’ The words tumbled out before Rose could stop them. She’d never said anything like that before, not even to her best friends. They’d never talked about those sorts of things, she and Grace and Ella. They talked about boys, of course they did. But it was just jokes and teasing and the occasional bit of crying on each other’s shoulders when things went wrong or got particularly embarrassing. They didn’t talk about ‘love’. And if they had they would’ve called it ‘lurve’, to show they didn’t really mean it.
Rosemary didn’t seem embarrassed. She turned away from the wardrobe and looked at Rose, still holding the red dress against her chest.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I suppose I did. I didn’t know it was that at the time, though. He just seemed . . . familiar. Do you understand?’
Rose nodded. She understood very well. It was how she’d felt when she’d first met Fred. Did that mean . . . that he was her Johnny? The thought made her feel scared and happy at the same time. And then she remembered the message she’d sent him and told herself there was no point in thinking about him any more. It was over. He was miles and miles and years and years away and she was probably never going to hear from him again. She looked at Rosemary who was still posing in front of the mirror with the red dress.
‘What are you going to do?’ she said.
Rosemary put the dress on the bed and went over to sit at the dressing table. It was under the window, where Rose had her desk, and was one of the old-fashioned ones with three mirrors at different angles, so you got three different reflections of yourself. Aunt Cosy had one like it in her room at home. Perhaps it was the same one. Rose wondered when her aunt had changed bedrooms. Maybe when she was grown-up and her mum had died?
‘I don’t know,’ she said. Three Rosemarys looked out at Rose from the mirrors. ‘People are losing people all the time. Really losing them, I mean. It feels silly to care so much about a boy I don’t even know.’
‘You mustn’t give up.’ Rose thought of her ninety-two-year-old aunt looking at the photograph in her memory box. One that got away, sweetheart. One that got away. ‘If you do, you might regret it all your life.’
‘Perhaps.’ Rosemary stared at her own reflection for a second, looking so much like her older self that Rose felt her skin prickle. Then, shaking the moment away, ‘There’s a dance tonight,’ she said, turning to Rose with a grin. ‘A big one, for the New Year, at Covent Garden. You know, the opera house? Billy’s playing, with his band. He’s been on at me to go.’
Rose stared at her. ‘But – I thought you said the bombers always come at night now?’
‘They do.’ Rosemary turned back to the mirror and started to fluff up her hair. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Well – is it safe? To go out, I mean?’
Rosemary shrugged. ‘You’re not safe anywhere these days, not really, out or in. But we’ve got to keep on going, haven’t we? No matter how bad things get. Just put one foot in front of the other and keep on going. That’s what Mr Churchill says, anyway.’ She put down her hairbrush. ‘I wasn’t going to go,’ she went on. ‘Didn’t want to give Billy the wrong idea. But’– she put her head on one side and looked at Rose from out of the mirror – ‘if you came . . .’
‘What? Oh no. I don’t think so. I can’t dance.’
‘You don’t have to. I couldn’t go on my own, Rose. But with you, it’d be different. Come on, we deserve to have some fun. Mother will be back from her shift soon, she can look after Betty.’
Rose shook her head. ‘Look at me.’ She indicated her filthy, twenty-first-century clothes. ‘I can’t go to a dance like this.’
Rosemary looked her up and down. ‘Hm. Not exactly glam, are you?’ Then, ‘I’ll lend you something!’ She jumped up from her chair and started to clatter about in the wardrobe again. ‘Here!’ She brought out a plain dress, dark-blue with long sleeves and tiny black buttons down the front. ‘This will suit you. Get up, come on, get up on your feet, your country needs
you!’
Rose couldn’t help laughing as she got up. Rosemary held the dress up against her and together they looked at her reflection in the long mirror on the wardrobe door.
‘You see! It does suit you!’
Rose wasn’t sure. ‘It’s a bit . . . lady-ish,’ she said. This was one of Grace’s invented words and was what they used to describe anything too smart, too feminine, too like something a teacher would wear.
‘Lady what? Ish? Is that a bad thing?’
Rose shrugged. ‘Maybe?’
‘It’s fine.’ Rosemary had decided. She threw the dress down on the bed next to the red one. ‘Now, shoes! Your feet are bigger than mine.’ She stretched out one leg and admired her toes. ‘Mother!’ she said suddenly. ‘She must be about your size. Stay!’ she added, pointing one finger at Rose. Tommy looked up, puzzled, before he realised she wasn’t talking to him. Rosemary was at the door now. ‘And put on the dress!’ She shot out of the room, banging the door and leaving a deep silence behind her.
Rose smiled and scratched Tommy’s head. She’d forgotten how much fun it was, getting ready to go out. She and Grace and Ella used to spend hours round each other’s houses, trying on clothes and deciding what to wear. That was before all the wedding stuff had started, of course. There was no point in getting dressed up when you didn’t go out any more.
She heard Rosemary arguing with Betty out on the landing, so she quickly took off her jeans and her top and wriggled into the dark-blue dress. It was difficult at first and at one point there was a nasty ripping sound, but then Rose discovered a zip at the side. This made things easier. She pulled the dress over her head and wriggled her arms into the sleeves. Then she looked in the mirror.
Rosemary was right. The dress did suit her. The dark-blue looked good against her pale face and made you notice the colour of her eyes.
‘Look look look!’ Rosemary burst back into the room, brandishing a pair of shoes. ‘These will fit you, I know they will, I can feel it in my bones!’
Rose in the Blitz Page 7