At the Break of Day

by Margaret Graham

  Rosie stopped. Her hands were blistered. There was a lower wall now and she looked back at the building, shading her eyes against the sun. Then back at the wall. This had to be where the yard was but there was no gate.

  She clutched the handles, pushing the wheelbarrow on again, welcoming the pain in her hands because it deflected her grief. She wheeled the roses round to the other side. Here was a small brown gate with a rusted latch which she lifted and then brushed back her hair. She could smell the swings on her hands.

  She eased open the gate, looking towards the ward. There was no face looking out but she could see Grandpa eating in bed with a bib on. She lifted first one, then the other rose, putting them where he could see, checking for greenfly though she knew there was none.

  She pushed the wheelbarrow home and bathed her hands. The blisters were bleeding. She bound them and then she climbed the stairs, taking a chair from Norah’s room and heaving herself up into the loft, searching through old boxes. At last she found his nailer’s penny. Grandpa had looked diminished in other people’s pyjamas, in a ward which was not his home and she wanted him to remember who he was. She wanted to remember who he was.

  That evening she took it in to him and he held it, holding her hand tightly too.

  ‘They call me Bert here, but my name’s Albert.’

  ‘I’ll tell them, Grandpa.’

  ‘I tell them all the time, but it doesn’t make any difference.’

  ‘I’ll tell them now,’ Rosie said, leaving him, feeling his hand about hers as she found the Sister and told her, and then found the Matron and told her also.

  Grandpa was asleep when she returned but he still held the penny. She kissed him and started to leave but as she reached the end of the bed he opened his eyes.

  ‘There are roses in the yard. They’ll have a gentle scent.’ He was smiling at her, his eyes full of love.

  She came the next day and he gave her the penny to put away safely.

  ‘They called me Albert today,’ he said.

  ‘Of course they did. They know that’s what you like.’

  It was hot in the ward and the water in the jug was warm but he didn’t mind and sipped as Rosie held the glass and then he told her how hot it had been around the nail furnaces, how thirsty they had all become. Rosie stroked his arm and listened as he told her how he had made Flemish tacks, so small that a thousand weighed only five ounces, but he had made hobs, and brush nails, and clinkers too.

  He sat up, and she straightened his pillows and he told her how the fire and the chimney were in the middle of the shop, how he used to watch the different colours in the flames when he was a child, how he had woven stories in his mind then, but once he was a nailer he didn’t have the time.

  He told her how he would take one of the three iron rods from the fire, turn it with one hand and hammer out the tang, or point, to make the iron harder. He told her of the special coke that was bought from the gas works. It had already been used but was good enough for them once it had been broken up.

  Rosie asked him about the boy who had been nailed to the doorpost by his ear, the one he had taken down. Grandpa stopped smiling then and asked for more water. It was still warm and Rosie held the glass to his lips and now he was crying.

  She stood up, putting her arm around him, feeling like the parent he had been, listening as he said, ‘He repaid me, you see.’

  He wouldn’t talk any more about nailing and she left that night wondering if his heart had broken each time she had cried throughout the years, as hers had just done. And wondering why it was that the tears had come.

  As August turned to September and September to October, Rosie and he talked of other things, other people, but never of the nailers. He told her of the books he would like to have written and how he had read them instead.

  She told him of Norah’s clerk who had ridden over on his bicycle. How Norah had taken him brass-rubbing at St Cuthbert’s, how she had come back with sore knees and a mouth like a sparrow’s bum which had flashed into a smile the moment he looked at her. They were going again next week, and the next and the next.

  ‘With a bit of luck and a following wind,’ Rosie said, and Grandpa laughed.

  She told him of the letters she had received from Frank and Nancy. They had asked her to write a feature for their paper because, Nancy said, it would cheer Frank up to think of her working at something like that.

  ‘Why does he need cheering up?’ Grandpa asked as the leaves swirled into the yard, over the wall, snatching at the roses, scudding into corners.

  ‘Things are a bit difficult on the paper right now. You know how work gets, Grandpa. There are ups and downs.’

  But it was more than that, she knew, as she slipped into the yard and pruned the roses before she left that night, putting the old blooms into the canvas bag she had brought. Frank had spoken up for the Anti-Nazi League during the war and the Local Administrator had discovered this. Frank had been questioned by two other guys now, Nancy had told her, adding that Commie-hunting was getting to be quite a sport.

  Rosie put away her secateurs and waved to the nurses who were watching from the window. They hadn’t minded about the roses. They had been pleased.

  That night and for the rest of the week she worked on an article about Austerity Britain, telling America of the fuel cuts the Midlands would have to suffer, losing power for one day a week; of the imports which still had to be kept at a minimum; how Britain had to export or die; how in 1946 even the new cricket balls for the Test Match had had to be rationed.

  She sent this off with a letter to Frank and Nancy telling them that Grandpa was a little stronger but really no better and that she needed to be able to delay her lunch-hour and visit at three, which Mrs Eaves allowed. Maybe another employer wouldn’t and so her career would have to wait for just a while longer.

  In October she read that the film star Ronald Reagan had appeared before a Congressional committee investigating Communism in the USA. She read how he had opposed a Hollywood witch-hunt against Communists or anything which might compromise the democratic principles of America. She read that already there was evidence against seventy-nine Hollywood subversives but Nancy wrote and told her that none of these had been named and hysteria was the order of the day.

  ‘Where the goddamn hell is it all going to end?’ Rosie asked Jack as they walked to the hospital in the afternoon on 1 November. He shook his head.

  Frank wasn’t too well, it was the strain of being questioned about activities which were deemed patriotic during the war years. But now the enemy was different and she felt the anger rising again as the wind whipped through her coat.

  She kicked the leaves, angry and confused that the world had broken into enemy camps again, before anyone had yet recovered from the last war, and even in America, the land which had always seemed so free, so happy, there were victims.

  Nancy had also written to say that the feature was not what they had wanted. They could read that in any paper. ‘What we want from you, my girl, is something from the point of view of the people and don’t leave the new career in the air for too long.’

  Rosie and Jack leaned against a lamppost, watching as children swung from a rope tied on the next one, playing chicken with the bikes which raced past in the gloom, listening to the curses of the riders who shook their fists and told the kids that they should be at home in bed.

  ‘I’ll try again,’ she said to Jack.

  That evening Grandpa talked of Bromsgrove again. He sat high up against his pillows, his eyes looking into hers as he told her of the foggers. His breathing was too loud tonight and the Sister had said he was not so well again. He was speaking quickly, as though there was no time, and Rosie felt the fear tighten within her.

  He told her how foggers were middlemen who employed nailers and sold their products to the nailmasters. How the nailmaster liked them because the fogger could provide him with whatever he wanted at short notice. This meant that the nailmaster did not have
to carry large stocks. It also meant that he did not have to supervise the nailers.

  ‘The fogger did that, you see,’ Grandpa panted.

  Rosie gave him more water. ‘Not now, Grandpa. There’s no hurry.’

  ‘But I want you to understand, little Rosie. Can’t you see that?’ He paused, coughed and she held a handkerchief to his mouth. ‘Can’t you see that?’ he repeated when he could talk.

  Rosie nodded. ‘Yes, Grandpa.’ But she couldn’t.

  ‘Those foggies could play tricks, you see. They could say them nails weren’t a proper job. Give you less for them but charge nailmaster the same. They could bore a hole in the weight. Weigh up your nails light, so you gave him too many. They were smart. They made money. They were hard.’

  Rosie patted his hand. ‘Sshh now.’

  There were screens round the bed next to Grandpa’s and a doctor had gone in.

  ‘But I want you to see how he made his money.’

  Rosie looked at him. ‘Who made his money, Grandpa?’

  ‘Barney, the boy with the nail through his ear. Your grandma loved him, you see. That’s why we came to London. He moved down here.’ He was panting, leaning forward. His shoulders were so thin beneath his jacket. ‘He moved with the money he’d made. That was when she wanted to come down here. It wasn’t me at all. But he was married when we got here.’

  Now Rosie couldn’t see the screens, she could only see Grandpa’s face as he picked hops in his beloved hills, his body easy, his eyes at peace. And then she thought of Grandma, whose eyes had seemed devoid of warmth. Could a woman like that ever have felt passion, love?

  Grandpa was coughing again and it was longer before he could catch his breath this time and while he did she smiled and said, ‘Oh no, Grandma loved you. You know she did.’

  Grandpa lay back, his eyes closed. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  ‘Anyway, Grandpa, she was married when she met this Barney, wasn’t she?’

  ‘She met him the week after we’d wed. After she’d come over from Dudley, and somehow the light went out of her face, if you know what I mean.’

  Rosie could say nothing because suddenly she saw Maisie and knew exactly what Grandpa meant.

  His hand was clasping hers now. ‘You must marry someone you love, someone who loves you, Rosie. You wait for that person and don’t you settle for anything less. Do you hear me, Rosie?’

  The screens were being moved back now and the visiting bell was ringing.

  ‘Do you hear me, Rosie?’ His grip was firmer than it had been since he had come in here.

  ‘I hear you, Grandpa, and I promise. But she loved you, you know.’

  She kissed him, smoothing the sheeting around him, brushing his hair to the side with her fingers, smiling into his eyes.

  He watched her walk up the middle of the ward, waited for her to turn and wave. She always waved, she always smiled and thought he couldn’t see her tears. But he saw them, all right. He had seen them when he had taken her to Liverpool. He had seen them as she had walked up the gangplank and he had felt her gas mask in his hand and had wanted to run after her, push everyone else away and take her back with him.

  But she had needed to be safe. That was what had been most important, that the children were safe. He lay back on the pillows, looking out into the yard, at the pruned rose trees. He remembered the children waving from the portholes, singing ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ as the tugs eased the ship out into the fairway.

  He had still heard them singing as the ship moved away. He hadn’t heard for four weeks whether she was safe and then each day, each week, each year had been empty without her. He loved her, like the air he breathed, like he’d loved Martha, like he’d loved Nellie, and Norah. He’d been down to Somerset to see Norah every three months but she’d been ashamed of him and had no more love for him than she’d ever had. She was her grandmother’s child and had learned all her bitterness at that woman’s knee and now there was no love left in him for Rosie’s sister, none at all.

  On 20 November Ollie said he would visit Grandpa while Rosie slept out overnight along the Mall with thousands of others to cheer as the King and Princess Elizabeth drove to Westminster Abbey.

  Jack arrived at midnight and they lay side by side on old blankets and newspapers and it was good to hear him breathing so close and to drink steaming tea together from thermos flasks as dawn came.

  She wrote it all down, the bitter cold, the woman who sang ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ at dawn and toasted the Royal couple with stout. She toasted Jack and Rosie too.

  ‘Because, God bless us,’ she said, ‘I like to see some love in this bloody awful world.’

  Jack’s kiss had tasted of tea, his lips had been soft, and now, as she peered over the heads of the crowd and snatched a view of the Irish State Coach escorted by the Household Cavalry in their scarlet uniforms and riding black horses, she could still feel his body alongside hers.

  She wrote of the tulle veil which hung from a circlet of diamonds and the coupons which had been needed. She wrote of Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten who had been born in Corfu, the son of a Greek Prince, and would now be known as Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

  Rosie wrote of the cheers from the crowd after the service as Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh travelled to their wedding breakfast at Buckingham Palace, cutting the five-hundred-pound wedding cake with Prince Louis of Battenberg’s sword.

  She knew this because she and Jack had moved along to the Palace and she had listened to the reporter in front of her. Jack had laughed and said she’d go far with ears that could flap that well. Rosie turned to laugh with him and as she turned she thought she saw Maisie at the back of the crowd. The light was back in her face and she was looking up at a big man with red hair who stooped and kissed her mouth.

  Rosie typed up the story that night and sent it to Frank, then visited Grandpa and wouldn’t let herself think of Maisie, or Grandma and the fogger. She wondered whether to tell Jack but she couldn’t bear to see the pain in his eyes return and besides, she might have been mistaken. Yes, that was it. It was a mistake. It wasn’t Maisie, the crowds had parted and then closed, it could have been anyone.

  At the end of November Frank wrote and said he loved the piece and it would be used. He also said that the Russians had tested an A bomb which was putting some members of the town into a total sweat. But do they seriously think anyone would use those bombs? he wrote. Rosie didn’t know because the world seemed crazy enough to do anything and she held Jack tighter that night as they walked back from visiting Grandpa because he would have to register for National Service in April.

  A letter from Nancy arrived at the beginning of December, when there had been a flurry of sleet which had frizzed Norah’s perm.

  Lower Falls

  November 26th, 1947

  Dearest Rosie,

  We think of your grandpop every day and wonder how things are. You know we send our love to you all and only wish we could be there to help.

  Great things are happening in Lower Falls. Our Local Administrator is becoming positively peacockish with importance and self-righteousness. A deadly combination. The big boys of the film industry have blacked ten Hollywood writers and producers who were cited for contempt of Congress after allegations that they were Commie sympathizers.

  They have said that none of these will be re-employed until ‘he is acquitted or has purged himself of contempt and declares under oath he is not a Communist.’ Many liberals feel that in America we should not have to declare anything at all. This should be a free country.

  I guess I lie awake at nights now because all that work Frank did in the war to encourage people to support the Britishers against the Nazis is beginning to look as though it is going to cause him pain. It somehow makes him an automatic Red. He is very tired, very strained. But I can’t believe that any of this can go on for long. Sanity will prevail, as my old mom used to say. I have to go. The old boy has bitten through another pipe. We will write s
oon.

  Nancy

  The next evening Jack and Rosie went to Soho, to walk down the street and hear the music pitching and soaring because she had dreamed all night that the jazz had become silent and the buildings were derelict brownstones.

  They stopped to listen to banjos, pumping tubas, foursquare rhythms. They leaned against railings and drank in the Chicago-style jazz which was drifting up from a basement window, closing their eyes at the solos with their riff backing, squeezed between snatches of the theme.

  Later, back in Middle Street, they kissed in the yard and Jack stroked her breasts and kissed her neck, her shoulder, the soft rising flesh, and Rosie didn’t feel the cold which had earlier chilled her. Then they held one another close, so close, because they were both new to such passion, such longing and wanted more, much more.

  On 20 December Rosie took paper and glue to the hospital and together she and Grandpa cut and stuck paper chains. They gave some to the ward and some she took home, and could not forget those swollen hands which could barely hold the paper together as it stuck.

  The next night they just sat and there was snow in the yard, settling on the rose bushes, and Rosie said that in no time at all the spring would be here.

  ‘Not for me, my little Rosie,’ Grandpa said as a nurse walked past with the old man who still picked at the air. ‘Not for me.’ But Rosie wouldn’t listen because she couldn’t imagine a time when he wasn’t there and so she talked of the jazz which had played in Soho and Lee who wanted a cart for Christmas. She talked of the pram in the shed which she and Jack had raced on and Grandpa just sat and smiled and listened until she fell silent, watching the clock, wanting to go, but not wanting to ever leave.

  ‘It’s because of Barney and your grandma that we got the house. I want you to know because you’ll need to understand this when I’m gone.’

  He shook his head as she interrupted. ‘No, Grandpa. It’s Christmas …’

  ‘Rosie, listen to me.’ It was the voice he had used when he was younger and firmer, and she knew she must listen, and so she did, holding a handkerchief to his mouth as he coughed, again and again before he could begin.