Gull Island

by Grace Thompson

  ‘Thank you for suggesting it.’ Rosita smiled confidentially. ‘But I plan to run my own business one day. What I have learned will be very useful.’

  ‘Oh? What business would that be? Pretty dresses no doubt.’

  ‘No. A newsagents,’ she replied almost without thought. She laughed later as she told Miss Grainger. ‘The only people I know who run a business of their own are the Careys so it was the first thing to come into my mind.’

  ‘Selling newspapers and tobacco isn’t a bad idea.’ Her friend puffed at the Four Aces cigarette held in a large amber holder. ‘Smoking is a popular activity and becoming more acceptable. And everyone needs a daily paper. Yes, you could do a lot worse.’ She stretched open the new box of twenty and removed the vouchers contained in it. They were saving to send for a pair of Gibsonette-style shoes for Rosita, for which they needed 120 vouchers.

  When Hitler’s army marched into Poland and war was declared, Luke wasn’t very concerned. It all seemed a long way off and could hardly affect the small café that Martine and he continued to run, near the beach in Calais. It wasn’t until British soldiers began arriving in France that he began to wonder what he and Martine should do.

  ‘You must leave,’ Martine said one morning when, looking very worried, she returned from the market. ‘Go now, today. A delay might mean your life.’

  ‘We won’t be panicked into anything.’ Luke smiled and smoothed the frown from her face tenderly. ‘I’ll write to my partner Jeanie and arrange for us to go there at the end of the month. But only for a visit.’ But he didn’t write. He believed that with the German army busy in Poland, France was safe. ‘By the time they think about attacking France and Holland, the British will have beaten them back to where they belong. There’s plenty of time to think about leaving.’

  In 1940 they ran out of time.

  ‘Go tonight, please, Luke,’ Martine pleaded.

  ‘We’ll both leave in the morning.’

  ‘No, my darling, not we, not us. But you must go.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I must return to Papa. He is a very old man now, and afraid. He needs me more than you do. It is my duty. Please don’t try and persuade me different.’

  ‘I need you. You must come with me. We can take your father as well. I know of a small cove where boats are still managing to leave. A few hours’ discomfort, that’s all. He will come if you explain why we’re going. He won’t want to live through another occupation.’

  ‘He will not leave, and I can’t either. Please, Luke. We’ll meet again, I know this, but for now it is au revoir.’

  Luke still refused to leave without her. He had been so happy in the simple life he shared with Martine. What would he do if she left him? He would never find anyone else to share his life so amicably. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I will not go. We’ll live through this together.’

  A few weeks later, at three o’clock in the morning, they were woken by furious knocking at the café door. Looking through the bedroom window they saw a group of German soldiers, armed with guns, standing outside. Martine pushed the bed aside, lifted two wide floorboards and gestured for Luke to hide in the place they had prepared in readiness for such an emergency as this. There wasn’t much room and it was thick with dangling spider webs and the droppings of mice. For once Luke was glad he was a small man.

  The soldiers searched the place and angrily demanded Martine tell them where the Englishman had gone.

  ‘A lover’s quarrel,’ she sobbed realistically. ‘We had a silly quarrel and now he is gone from me! Left me, gone away with hate in his heart and I don’t know where. I am desolate.’

  Luke stayed under the floorboards all that day. With Martine sitting on the bed above him, watching for the return of the soldiers, they talked.

  ‘Do you not feel ’appy to go ’ome to your little cottage, Luke?’ Martine asked. ‘Do memories of your papa still worry you? Death is always difficult to accept, even the death of someone who made you so un’appy.’

  ‘When my mother died, Father told me not to cry,’ Luke told her, pushing a spider’s web from across his eyes. ‘He said it was unmanly. I remember Roy coming over and we were hugging each other and sobbing and my father came and tore us apart as if we’d been caught stealing from his pocket.’

  ‘Mon petit, it must ’ave been ’ard for you then.’

  ‘Roy’s family were always touching, hugging. Roy and I used to roll about on the floor like puppies in mock fights, but if Father saw us I was punished.’

  ‘I knew this when we first met and I couldn’t get close. Kissing and hugging, they were difficult for you. Your papa, ’e was between us.’

  ‘Even when I was with the Careys, his shadow was there, making me afraid to show affection the way they all did.’

  With his disembodied voice coming from beneath the floor and unable to look at him, Martine took courage and asked, ‘’Ave you not thought, Luke, that per’aps your father was the one with the problem? That he loved young men, er, what you say, too well? Could he not ’ave been fighting that all ’is life? If that were so, then wouldn’t he be afraid of the same thing showing in ’is son? You understand what I am meaning, mon petit?’

  ‘Good heavens. No!’ He took a deep breath, which made him cough, and it was moments before he could go on. ‘My father a homosexual, you think? That’s a crazy idea. He was always—’ He went silent, remembering so many things.

  Scenes sped across his inner vision. The time that, being small, he was chosen to play the part of a woman in the school play. His father coming to complain and having him taken out of the production. The new clothes chosen, only to have them thrown away labelled effeminate. So many things became clear as he thought of Martine’s words. It wasn’t him, it was his father. It was his father’s burden he had been carrying all these years. The realization grew like a glorious bubble of joy.

  When it was midnight, Martine released him and handed him a small shoulder bag. ‘There is food for three days and little else. You need to travel light and fast. God speed, my darling. We’ll meet again when this is over.’

  Luke accepted his fate, not least because he was aware of the danger into which his being there was putting Martine. He should have gone ages ago. If he stayed and her lies were found out – he cut off the rest of the scenario. He couldn’t bear to think what might have happened to her if he’d been discovered.

  Travelling at night he made contact with three other Englishmen intent on escape. For two days they hid near the coast, Luke selling his overcoat and shoes in exchange for motor fuel with which they would pay for their passage. They were taken on board a rusting, foul-smelling boat and sent on their way with the fishing fleet.

  The boat was old and barely seaworthy. The tackle was red with rust and unmovable, having been left without attention for several years. The wood was so weak Luke found he could dig out chunks with a fingernail. The nets were rotten and fell to pieces when touched. If the Germans stopped them they wouldn’t have a chance of bluffing them.

  ‘It’s going to be a race between which gets us first, the Germans or the sea,’ Luke said grimly. But it was their only chance if they were to escape capture and imprisonment. Luke could face anything but being locked up.

  The Mouette – The Seagull – was a cranky craft, low at the sides, high in the bow, with a determination to list to port that gave her an odd appearance. Miraculously, after libations of oil, the pump still worked, and pushing and pulling the handle was a continuous task. In mid-Channel they doubted if they were keeping pace with the water seeping in through the weak and uncaulked timbers.

  The weather was kind, and fortunately they weren’t spotted by aircraft wearing roundels or swastikas, either of which might have fired on them without investigating too carefully who and what they were. Two more days and Luke was standing in his bookshop, smiling at his partner Jeanie, once more without shoes.

  Chapter Ten

  THE DAY WAS very warm, the sun beatin
g down from a sky that was too blue to see. The crowds strolling through the main shopping street in summer dresses and short-sleeved shirts seemed in no hurry to reach their destination. Time and again, Rosita sighed with impatience as people blocked her way: standing idly around, looking at the temptations offered in shop windows, choosing comic postcards to send back home or just stopping to talk to a friend in the middle of the pavement.

  Petrol was free of rationing at last, five years after the end of the war, and already an increased number of holidaymakers were flooding into the town. Most foodstuff was still on ration and the cafés were doing a good trade as people enjoyed a meal without using their precious rations. Queues of customers spilled onto the pavement waiting for tables to be free, adding to the crush.

  Rosita looked at her cocktail watch, a present to herself to celebrate her first shop. Her hair appointment was in less than five minutes and she hated to be late, to have to rush in, be fitted with a gown and sit in a chair without taking a moment to compose herself and decide what she wanted the hairdresser to do.

  Monday morning wasn’t normally a busy time – in fact, most salons were closed, so it was unlikely that the hairdresser was so busy she would have to wait, unless the holidaymakers were queuing there too. The seaside town welcomed and valued its summer visitors and the trippers who came for the day, but there were times when Rosita wished they had chosen a town other than her own!

  She saw Auntie Molly Carey approaching and darted into a shop doorway. Later she wanted to see her, but not yet, not until she was ready. The elderly lady walked past and Rosita hurried on, thinking that her much-loved friend was now past the age for retirement. Goodness, how time had flown.

  It was June 1950 and she reminded herself with a frisson of concern that she was approaching her thirty-third birthday. It was time she had made her mark and settled into the kind of life she wanted. Thirty-three was an age when most of her acquaintances were head of a growing family. Auntie Molly Carey had had ten children. She shuddered. That prospect was too horrifying for words, and far from the life she wanted for herself. She wanted success and money and a position of importance in the town. Today would see a big step taken towards that goal.

  She reached the salon and went gratefully into the coolness and sank into a chair, putting the bag that held her new hat on the small table beside her.

  ‘We are ready for you, Miss Evans, if you please,’ the assistant said. ‘Cutting, is it? Or just a shampoo and set today?’ She pulled out a chair.

  ‘A light trim, please, Megan. And I’ll sit at this mirror, in the best light. I need to look my very best today.’ Her voice was clipped, authoritative. She had an air of importance that made everyone, including the hairdresser, defer to her wishes.

  Megan moved the tray of curlers from the place she had intended to use and moved to the place chosen by Rosita. Bending her client’s head forward, she began washing her thick brown hair. Cut well it fell in a short under-roll, it held its shape well and always looked immaculate. Megan wondered about the important meeting that justified the extra appointment that was making Miss Evans a little on edge, but she dare not ask. Miss Caroline Evans did not encourage chatter.

  An hour later, with her hair shining and in perfect shape, swinging below a hat of navy blue straw that tilted at an attractive angle to one side of her forehead, Rosita thanked the girl and left. She wore a smart linen suit of pale buttercup yellow that consisted of a button-through dress reaching just below the knee and a straight matching jacket with neat reveres and outside pockets that gave it a tailored look.

  Nylon stockings flattered her shapely legs with a blocked heel and a clear, straight seam and her small feet bounced confidently in pale navy sandals that matched the hat. She looked what she was determined to be: a confident and successful businesswoman.

  Her appointment was with the bank manager and he showed her to a chair and ordered tea. While he waited for it to arrive he chatted amiably about the weather, the crowds at the Pleasure Beach, which was ‘doing better trade than usual with the holiday season hardly begun’. Rosita nodded politely although her mind was not on what he was saying but on the interview to come.

  ‘Well, Miss Jones, about this loan.’ She had used her own name for business transactions although no one, apart from Miss Grainger and the Careys, knew her other than Miss Caroline Evans. She noticed his voice had changed. Pleasantries finished, they got down to business.

  Unperturbed by the briskness of his manner, Rosita gave him a brief outline of her plans and less than fifteen minutes later she left the quiet office with an agreement to borrow £600, with her shop as collateral and Miss Grainger as guarantor for the rest.

  She telephoned her friend and told her the news and they promised themselves an evening of celebration: a theatre followed by supper somewhere grand and very expensive.

  With the agreement clutched in her small hand, she caught the bus and, dressed as she was, so unsuitably, she caught a train and went to sit on the beach miles out of town which was so strongly associated with her blighted childhood.

  The water was blue, reflecting the clear sky above, and looked tempting, although sea-bathing had never really appealed to her. She took off her sandals and stockings and walked to where the Careys’ old house still stood: ruinous, in danger of collapsing at any moment. Sitting on the worn step where the Carey children had often sat to eat their meals, she thought back over the past years.

  So much had happened since she had left the home and begun to live her own life. Years in which she had caught occasional glimpses of her mother but had never made herself known. Once, she thought her mother had stared straight through her, but the smart clothes, the glasses and the short hair had fooled her. Her mother and her half-sisters, Kate and Hattie, had left the town now and Rosita had no idea of their whereabouts. She didn’t even know if they had survived the bombing during the war. They were part of the unpleasant past. The folded paper on which was written the agreement to borrow £600 was the future.

  She had stayed in the dress shop until war had interrupted that comfortable existence and she’d had to choose whether to go into the forces or into a factory making munitions. She chose the factory simply because it offered more money. From the time she had escaped from the home, money had been her god.

  Saving, and at the same time managing to give the impression of being used to better things, she ignored girls with whom she had to work, refusing to be accepted as one of them. The time in the factory was time in limbo, a time that had to be lived through before she could make progress.

  As soon as war ended and people began to rebuild their lives, she had bought a small newsagents in Station Row and, while still working at the factory, gave a retired Miss Grainger the job of running it. With a young man dealing with the early hours between 5.30 and nine, and giving herself an hour each evening to deal with the books, they had managed very well. With takings of £38 a week it wouldn’t make them millionaires but it was a good beginning.

  The sun reflecting off the sea hurt her eyes and she closed them. The warmth made her drowsy and she relaxed. The sea, high on the narrow beach and not far from her feet as she sat on the steps of the derelict house, soothed her like a lullaby. After the sleepless night and the anxiety of whether or not she would convince the bank manager of a woman’s suitability to borrow money, she fell into a deep sleep.

  She dreamed of Richard Carey, seeing him as the man/child who looked after his family when his kind but ineffectual father could not. He had been so strong and if he had been her brother she would never have been sent away, put in that home away from everyone she knew and cared about. But as she slowly emerged from sleep and dreams, to semi-alertness and fact, she remembered that today she was hoping to cheat him, just a little, and hoped that one day he would forgive her.

  Her first thought when she was fully roused after lying for half an hour on the uncomfortable step was whether she had ruined her skirt. Feeling weak and foolish for
succumbing to the temptation of a daytime doze like an old man, she looked around hoping no one had witnessed it. Then she rose, put on her stockings and sandals in the ruin of the Careys’ old home, and walked briskly to the station.

  It was after 5.30 when she went into the Careys’ shop. They usually closed at six and Auntie Molly Carey was busy with a last-minute flurry of customers. Rosita stood near the door leading to the living rooms and waited. She looked cool as she always did but her heart was racing with anxiety.

  ‘Go through and put the kettle on while I see to the till, will you, fach?’

  ‘I’ve brought some cakes.’ Rosita waved a paper bag. ‘How many are home? I hope I’ve brought enough.’

  ‘Only me and you and your Uncle Henry Carey, cariad.’ Mrs Carey finished serving the last customer and closed the shop door, leaning on it with a sigh of relief. She looked tired, smaller and more frail every time Rosita called to see her. Rosita told herself she was doing the best for them. The very best.

  She put the cakes she had bought onto a plate and looked at the name of the bakery on the torn bag: ‘Rees’s Fresh Cakes.’ But the shop next door was in the process of closing down. Like two others in the same block, it had been sold and awaited its new owner. Rumours wove themselves around the prospective buyers but no one knew for certain who would be coming there when the last cake was sold.

  ‘It’s strange how sometimes things go in patterns,’ Mrs Carey mused. ‘All the shops have remained practically unchanged for years, more than three generations some of them, and now it seems that the whole block is in the process of change.’ She felt a stab of panic. Looking at the young woman beside her, she asked anxiously, ‘You are sure, love? What if you’re making a mistake? What if the area changes so much the business fails? Success or failure is such a precarious thing. If the mix of shops is wrong, the area won’t attract regular customers, and none of them will do well. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’