Gull Island

by Grace Thompson

  Food had been rationed in February 1918, when everyone thought the government had abandoned the idea completely and would continue to persuade the country to eat less imported foodstuffs without the law making it impossible to do otherwise. It affected some more than others. Mrs Carey, living in two overcrowded rooms and trying to survive on a very low wage, didn’t see the point of complaining when the government demanded two meatless days each week – for her family there had often been meatless weeks. Mr Carey refused to eat margarine when they could not afford butter – he insisted it couldn’t be edible as it was cheaper than cart grease!

  Barbara felt the war was happening somewhere else, between peoples whose arguments didn’t concern her. Cardiff was only eight miles away and she had never been there, so how could events across the sea in a land where they spoke a different language affect her? The only way war affected her was by seeing the letters in the now-familiar envelopes delivered almost daily to families around the street until she thought that there couldn’t be any more young men left to die in far-off fields.

  Eventually, even those small dramas failed to really touch her. She would shake her head, her lovely eyes filling with tears, and she would say the expected words, like, ‘There’s a shame,’ ‘Pity for her,’ ‘Isn’t it sad?’, but nothing felt real any more. Bernard was dead and there couldn’t be anything as hard to bear ever again.

  Bernard’s mother came several times to the overflowing house in which Barbara continued to live. Barbara was not happy about her coming but was sympathetic to her need. Each time she came, the unhappy woman sat and criticized Barbara, and nursed her granddaughter, her thin shoulders stooped as she cwtched the crying child.

  ‘Always crying she is,’ she said in reproof. ‘Anyone can see she’s unhappy. She’s ill fed and just look at her clothes, ach a fi! This old blanket she’s wrapped in isn’t fit for a mangy old dog.’ Each time she came she offered to adopt Rosita. Her requests became demands as she criticized Barbara more and more strongly for allowing her child to suffer unnecessary deprivation.

  ‘Stubborn you are, my girl, and an uncaring mother. She’d be brought up in comfort and without having to eat stuff like that!’ She pointed to the ‘bread and scrape’, as Mrs Carey called the bread thinly coated with margarine and the seven-pound jar of jam that had been placed on the table. ‘Proper food she’d have and a room of her own and decent schooling too. Not like Mrs Carey’s ragamuffins wandering the streets following their useless father! The best is what she’d have with us. Selfish mother who’d deprive her child of all that!’

  ‘It’s only Richard who won’t go to school,’ Barbara defended. ‘Like a man he is for all his lack of years, delivering papers and doing whatever else he can to help the family.’ But her thoughts were not on winning arguments. Mrs Stock’s words penetrated and were causing her to feel guilt. Of all the jewels offered, the thought of a room for her own use seemed to Barbara the most luxurious. Without moving her head she allowed her large, gentle eyes to glance around the overcrowded and very shabby room.

  Paper peeling from a corner where rain had penetrated through weakened brickwork. A ceiling patterned with cracks, missing plaster and coloured with endless years of smoke. Wasn’t Mrs Stock right? Wouldn’t Rosita be happier with her grandmother than with her? What can I offer, she asked herself, except a continuation of this dreary life we’re leading?

  She rolled her pale blue, dreamy eyes back to the solemn face of Mrs Stock and shook her head. She always had a look of calmness and even now, while her thoughts were in turmoil over her decision, she spoke quietly. ‘Rosita’s mine. She’s best with me.’ Whatever happened, she knew she had to at least try and keep Rosita with her. She strengthened her resolve, remembering the urgency on Luke’s face as he made her promise never to allow anyone to take Rosita from her. She half smiled, remembering his certainty that the baby would be a girl.

  ‘You can smile and look as smug as you like. It’s easy now, being sheltered from reality by the kindness of poor Mrs Carey, taking room and energy she can’t spare. Selfish, that’s what you are, but I’ll have her in the end, see if I don’t!’

  Looking at the thin-faced, unhappy woman who needed the child as a substitute for the family she had so tragically lost, Barbara vowed silently that whatever happened, Rosita would never live with Mrs Stock. That house might have many things others would call luxuries but there would also be misery, bitterness and a lack of laughter. No, Bernard’s mother would never take Rosita, not while she had a tongue in her head to shout a protest.

  If only things had worked out on Graham Prothero’s farm. Plenty of space there, enough and to spare. Fields for Rosita to wander in and woods to explore. Plenty of fresh food too. Heaven that would have been for Rosita to grow up in – such freedom, she couldn’t have failed to be happy. But the freedom was too costly a price – her own in exchange for Rosita’s. Besides, she reminded herself, she hadn’t been given the choice once Graham had discovered about Rosita. Pointless to regret the decision to leave when there hadn’t been one to make.

  No, there was nothing to think about with regret. And it was hardly luxury she had walked away from. Best not to invent dreams that were pure fantasy. Although, memories of the place weren’t all bad. Hard work for sure, but Graham had been fair in his own way.

  Leaving Rosita with Mrs Carey whenever possible, Barbara did several jobs to earn her keep. Working odd hours and taking what work was offered, she managed to pay Mrs Carey for her food and buy the necessities for the baby. Most days, working and bringing up Rosita kept her busy from early morning until she fell exhausted, into her shared bed, late at night.

  Mrs Carey continued to help without complaint, but sickly, and with another child of her own on the way, Barbara knew it was only a matter of weeks before that good lady asked her to find somewhere else. Mrs Stock had been right about that, she admitted silently. She mustn’t depend on Mrs Carey’s good nature for much longer.

  There were rumblings of discontent from Mrs Carey’s landlady too. She issued frequent reminders that the rooms were overcrowded and the bogie cart and piles of newspapers were a nuisance to other tenants, going in and out past these obstacles.

  Noise from Rosita’s constant wailing didn’t help. Whatever they did to try and pacify her, she cried for most of the twenty-four hours of each day. The walls resounded to the banging of irate lodgers trying to sleep, their complaints reinforced by the landlady’s requests to be ‘more considerate, if you please. That child is noisy beyond!’ The prospect of the whole family being thrown out onto the street was a growing fear.

  There were nights when even fatigue from the hectic work-filled hours couldn’t keep her from lying awake wondering how she would manage once they parted from the Carey family. Here there was security, with baby Rosita sleeping in the wooden crib made by Mr Carey, watched over with something approaching adoration by Richard.

  Now eighteen months old, Blodwen needed him less, so Richard took responsibility for Rosita’s wellbeing. He accepted care of her like he took care of everything else: very seriously. It was he who fed her with the bottle of Nestlé milk which Barbara made before she left for work in the pre-dawn dark. He who wrapped some sugar in muslin for her to suck to keep her quiet for a few precious minutes while his mam rested.

  Idris rarely left his mother’s side and Barbara heard him cry softly, as if trying not to, then admitting that Rosita’s crying kept him from sleeping and gave him a pain in his head. Several times during the night, Mrs Carey would drag herself from her bed to nurse Rosita so her golden boy could sleep.

  Barbara disliked Idris as much as she loved young Richard. Idris stole from her meagre purse although Mrs Carey refused to accept this. He also stuck his fingers into the tin of Nestlé condensed milk and licked them, so there was often none for the baby’s bottle.

  Giving up trying to make Mrs Carey believe her, Barbara took extra care of her pennies and hid the milk whenever she went out, telling only
Richard where to find it.

  In the local fish restaurant, Barbara cleaned fish ready for cooking and scrubbed the yard. Chilblains covered her hands and her ankles but were ignored as she went from the fish cleaning to a house where she again used cold water to prepare vegetables and then wash floors. Summer was coming, wasn’t it? And with it respite from the painful condition. Things were bound to improve once summer came. Plenty of jobs then, once the summer visitors started to arrive.

  At The Anchor public house, where her father was a regular customer, she emptied toilets and washed the floor of the barn that housed them. A dozen jobs, each unpleasant, earned her sufficient money to survive. She refused nothing. As long as there were hours in the day she was determined to fill them earning money to keep herself and her daughter.

  Mrs Jones, Barbara’s mother, still gave the occasional florin or half a crown to Mrs Carey to help her daughter, although Mr Jones knew nothing about it. Mrs Carey hid the money and managed without it, knowing that one day soon, Barbara would need money to find a place of her own.

  The newest Carey child was born in April, a tiny scrap of a girl they called Meriel. For a while, Barbara abandoned several jobs to look after Mrs Carey. Mr Carey seemed more weighed down by the event than his wife and sat for hours at a time on a chair in the back garden staring at the apple tree as if it could somehow supply an answer to their growing problems. Richard tried to persuade Idris to help with the newspapers but Mrs Carey refused to allow it.

  ‘Not Idris, ask one of the others, Richard, bach,’ she pleaded. ‘He keeps me company and he’s helpful beyond with the new baby.’

  Richard knew that his useless brother did nothing but he sighed stoically and carried on alone.

  One day in May, when she was blessedly free of work, Barbara borrowed an old pram and took Rosita for a walk. The day was clear and sweet-scented with the early blossoms that decorated the trees and hedges, adding a beauty that gladdened her heart. She pushed the ancient pram to the local Pleasure Beach. There, amid other more prosperous strollers, with beautiful clothes and shiny new prams in which warmly dressed children looked out on a comfortable world, she made the decision to leave the Careys.

  She had to find a regular job which included a place to live. Otherwise it would mean paying someone to mind Rosita and that would take most of what she could earn. It was a frightening prospect, to strike out on her own without Auntie Molly Carey to support her. Almost as frightening as when her mother told her she was going to have a baby, or learning of Bernard’s death falling from a London train.

  Briefly, she considered going to see her parents but the idea froze and faded almost as soon as it was conceived. She saw in her mind’s eye the expression on her father’s face and knew he was implacable. She had seen him several times when she went to clean at The Anchor and he ignored her totally. Nothing would make him change his mind and have her back home.

  Once Rosita started crawling, Auntie Molly Carey would find it hard to cope, with a new child of her own and Blodwen, that solemn-faced little girl, whom Richard still treated like a doll and was still less than two years old.

  Several of the Carey children were now working. The twins had left the crowded rooms with ill-concealed glee and found places as live-in servants in large houses. They earned little more than their keep and refused to spare even a few pennies to help their mother and their family. Alun and Billie found labouring jobs putting in a few hours after school finished, and Jack and Gareth earned a few shillings delivering groceries around the streets for local shops.

  Richard seemed to be the strength of the Careys. He had been helping his father with the paper round and other, less legal occupations, since he was three, but the money he helped to earn was little enough.

  Barbara shook off the prosaic musings and took a deep breath, absorbing the tantalizing scents of the afternoon with its hint of approaching summer. Children’s voices called, mothers scolded, grandmothers soothed. Here was a place where people came to forget their worries, even the war seemed to have failed to reach this pocket of frivolity.

  The sun warmed her cheeks and she closed her eyes for a moment and pretended she was on holiday, staying at one of the smart boarding houses with Bernard, who had just that moment gone to buy her an ice cream. She walked as slowly as she could, while making sure the pram moved enough to prevent Rosita from crying. She felt the need to stay with the cheerful crowd for a while, watching with some envy as grandfathers dug into well-filled pockets to pay for rides for excited children.

  There were few fathers present and those that were were in uniform. They stood to attract abuse if they were seen in civilian clothes and obviously able-bodied. Many would suspect them of being conscientious objectors and proclaim their disapproval loudly. She sighed. The war couldn’t be forgotten for long, not with almost every family grieving for a loved one.

  A group of young sailors strolled along the promenade and children ran to jump up and touch their collars for luck. The sailors good-naturedly laughed and even bent down for the smallest to reach. They were laughing as though they hadn’t a care in the world as they went towards the amusement park. Yet they too must have known grief.

  The figure-eight was by far the tallest and largest of the rides and it looked precarious, not unlike a half-built building awaiting the bricks and cement that would complete it and give it strength. But as always it was in great demand and Barbara watched as the sailors joined the queue and quickly got into conversation with some girls standing near the ticket office. For a moment, she felt a pang of regret for having Rosita. Girls of her age were having such fun; screaming in exaggerated fright to the amusement of those watching and waiting their turn, as the cars climbed to the highest point then swooped down at terrifying speed, their hair flying in the wind, pretty hats held on tightly, clasped in white-knuckled fists.

  She could ill afford it, soon having to face the cost of a room for herself and probably pay for someone to look after Rosita, but she went into the refreshment rooms and ordered tea and a scone. Her eyes became dreamy as she imagined sitting there with Bernard, taking tea with all the time in the world.

  Before she had finished her tea, Rosita woke and began crying again, a tight-fisted, red-faced, angry complaint. Barbara looked around apologetically, patting the child’s back, and when that did nothing to ease the child’s distress she left and walked back through the crowd, pushing the pram and carrying Rosita.

  She walked back along the promenade, putting the struggling child back in the pram and jiggling the battered old thing in an effort to quieten her screams. She looked down at the sand where a Punch and Judy show had attracted an audience large enough to block the way to those trying to buy at the stalls set up just below the sea wall. A fight seemed likely between the Punch and Judy men and a couple trying to serve customers with ice cream that was rapidly melting. She paused a moment, expecting and half hoping that the runny ice cream would be thrown at the puppeteers.

  There were stalls selling everything from kites, singing birds, balloons, flags and buckets and spades and in one instance, bathing costumes. ‘Don’t be shy, fach, try it on behind the stall, no one will look.’

  Barbara looked at passers-by, wondering how different their lives were from her own. Most of the elderly men looked smart but rather warm in their best suits and stiff-collared shirts. Prosperous-looking women with haughty expressions strolled in large ornate hats and thick coats and skirts. She smiled and tried to lift her spirits and share the fun, to forget for a moment or two the predicament she was facing. Perhaps life was a matter of pretence for most people? Like those young sailors, acting as though they hadn’t a care in the world. But as she turned away from the thinning crowd and began the long trek home, her forced high spirits plummeted. What could she do to earn money and keep Rosita safe?

  Walking back through the quiet streets, an occasional cheery group passed her carrying balloons, small toys and even goldfish in round bowls, prizes they had won
in the amusement park. The sound of their laughter gave her a pang of loneliness. She stopped to allow one family to pass her rickety old pram and glanced at the advertisements in a tobacconist’s window. One notice caught her eyes and she wrote down the name and address of the shop on the back of a piece of paper torn from a hoarding. ‘Housekeeper wanted for farm.’ it said. Her experience was hardly great, but she had worked for a few weeks for farmer Graham Prothero, and at least knew what to expect. If she exaggerated her knowledge a little, she might be lucky.

  She would write a reply and the next day hand it into the shop to post to the advertiser. It was a solution she hadn’t thought of but it was a solution, and the idea of country living for them both was strongly appealing. It would be so good for Rosita. Why hadn’t she thought of it? It was the perfect answer. A job where she could keep her baby with her. She continued home with a more buoyant step.

  The reply to her letter came by post less than a week later and she opened it with fingers trembling with hope. What a relief it would be for Auntie Molly Carey. Then she glanced at the note and gave a groan of disappointment, recognizing the address of the farm. It was Graham Prothero, from whom she had run away. Or who had thrown her out, as if it mattered which!

  How fortunate she hadn’t mentioned it to the Careys. At least the disappointment was only her own. Angrily remembering her previous experience and not wanting to repeat it, she threw the letter in the fire and tried to forget she had ever written. But when she returned to the Careys’ two rooms after work a few days later, she knew she might have to change her mind.

  ‘Got to go we have,’ Mrs Carey said, as, sobbing, she opened the door to Barbara and handed her the baby Meriel. ‘Given notice to leave the rooms on Saturday week.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’ Barbara almost fell over the bogie in her haste to get inside and comfort the woman. ‘What reason can they have to throw you out?’