At the Break of Day

by Margaret Graham

  Instead she listened to the swing music on the radio, and longed for jazz. She looked out at the small towns they were passing through and the petrol stations with their pumps right beside the road and longed for Jack, only for Jack.

  ‘Frank’s getting better,’ Joe said, reaching forward, pulling out the lighter, drawing on his cigarette. ‘He doesn’t know you’re coming. But I sort of guessed you might use the ticket. I left word with the neighbours.’ He was looking at her and she nodded.

  ‘I know. I should have wired to tell them. It was stupid. I was busy getting ready, saying goodbye.’

  ‘Uh huh. So how’s little England?’

  It was hot, and her legs stuck to the seat. She wound down the window. There was a smell of petrol, diesel and dust. Heat hazed the distant mountains. She thought of the soft hills of Hereford, the stark dales that Jack spoke of. She looked at Joe’s hands now. There were no scars on his fingers and thumbs.

  ‘England’s just fine,’ she said. ‘It was good of you, Joe, to send me the ticket. I’ll let you have the money when we get to the lake.’

  ‘Say, no hurry. We know things are tight with you Britishers right now.’

  She wound up the window, feeling in her purse. She had the money. It was her savings.

  ‘Things aren’t tight with us little Britishers,’ she said, putting the money on the dashboard, swallowing her anger. She closed her eyes, pretending to sleep as the next four hours crept by. Pretending to sleep until they drove in amongst the walnut and the ash trees and then the rhododendrons which were purple in June.

  Just wish there was still the wild plum and the white oak like my dad knew, she mouthed, as Frank had always done at this stage of the journey, and wondered if Frank had been well enough to do it this time.

  She was sitting up now, leaning forward, as the sun went down below the hills and the earth was oozing out the last of the heat. She heard the crunch of the gravel beneath the tyres, saw the wood-lapped house, smelt the lake. Yes, she was sure she could smell it.

  She opened the door before the car stopped, ran across and up the steps, opening the door, and then stopped. She hadn’t told them she was coming. How different would they be?

  But then Nancy was running across the cool pine floor.

  ‘Where the goddamn hell have you sprung from, my darling little Rosie?’

  And her voice was the same and the arms that held her, but the face which looked closely into hers was older, so much older, and thinner and the lines were deep from the nose to the mouth and there were shadows beneath the eyes.

  ‘Joe sent me a ticket. I’ve paid for it. I came. I love you both so much, so I came.’ Rosie reached for the hand which was smoothing her hair and kissed it. ‘How is he?’

  They were walking across the floor and then she stopped and turned, looked back as Joe brought in her bags.

  ‘I owe you, Joe. Thank you.’

  He was still so tall, so strong, so tanned, but she longed for Jack, his slighter body, his smile, his pale skin, his drawn face. Her Britisher.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, then turned and climbed the stairs because she had already forgotten the boy who had kissed her breasts after the barbecue.

  She sat with Frank all evening, holding his hand, laughing when he chewed his empty pipe, listening as Nancy read him Gone With the Wind.

  ‘It makes him fall asleep,’ she said.

  Rosie sat with him until he fell asleep, then she walked without shoes down the stairs, feeling the coolness of the floors, breathing in the smell of pine from the furniture, from the shellacked logs, from the very air which was cool as she stepped out on to the verandah. She walked with Nancy across the lawn, into the shadows of the trees, and neither spoke as they approached the lake.

  She could hear its ripples slapping against the shore, smell it on the breeze, feel the mulch of the woods beneath her feet. She lifted her head. She could not see the star-strewn sky through the branches.

  Then they were out on to the shore and the moon lit the air and the water and she dug her shoes into the sand, reaching down, scooping some into her hand, letting it fall through her fingers. Jack would be happy here. She would bring him one day and they would make love here, while the sand was still warm.

  She put her arm through Nancy’s. They walked down to the water, letting it lap their feet.

  ‘So how is he really?’ Rosie asked because they hadn’t spoken of this until now.

  ‘Thank God, he’s going to be fine. They think anyway, as long as he doesn’t get a lot of pressure again.’ Nancy looked up at the sky. ‘It kind of makes you feel the world’s gone mad, Rosie. Here you have a good man, then things change and suddenly there’s a suspicion he’s a bad man because of the company he keeps or kept. Because of the words of reason he writes.’

  She turned and they walked towards the boathouse.

  ‘And what’s even more crazy is when that company isn’t bad either, but just had or have Commie connections. It kind of makes me want to puke. But it makes me goddamn frightened too because it’s happening here, in our “free” country.’

  The wind was gentle, there were no waves now, just a swell. It would be a good fishing night for Frank.

  ‘Will he get completely well?’ Rosie looked towards the point. Frank had looked older, like Nancy, thinner too. The lines were deep and his eyes sunken. He had no tan.

  Nancy hugged her now. ‘Sure, honey. Especially now that you’re here. He is just so pleased and he knows it must have been hard to leave Jack and Maisie, especially now that they’re sending British troops to Korea.’

  Rosie drank hot chocolate in the sitting-room, talking about Uncle Bob, about Norah, about Grandpa, watching the moths beat against the glass, hearing their thuds, feeling the cold fear which Nancy’s words had brought, but not being able to speak of it, because Frank was ill and needed her. Because Nancy did too.

  It was only when Nancy had kissed her at the bedroom door that she could think. She moved to the window, opened it and breathed air which was so different to London. Then she wrote to Jack, thinking of the landlady at Cowes and her son’s friend. You only have to go if you volunteer, the man at the fairground had said. She told Jack again now. She also told him again and again that he must not, but then, why would he?

  The next day and the next and every day in July and August she sat with Frank beside his bed, with the windows and doors wide open, the drapes billowing in the breeze, playing records on his gramophone. They talked, but never about Korea, or McCarthy or his three friends who now had no jobs, about the ‘hate’ letters which Nancy said they had begun to receive in far greater quantities since North Korea invaded the South. Neither did they talk about the falling readership.

  There were many hours when they just sat silently together listening to the piano of Erroll Garner, the voice and trumpet of Armstrong, or the record by The Gang, Bob’s new band, that had a tension and an urgency which Rosie liked and so did Frank.

  She tapped her foot, poured him iced drinks and thought of the reports in the US papers of the American soldiers who were being mauled as the North Koreans pressed home their advance, and of the British 27th Infantry Brigade who were travelling to Pusan from Hong Kong. She thought of all the United Nations troops that were still being pressed back into the South Eastern coastal tip and thought that the world had gone mad.

  Each of those days she walked down the gravel path to the mail box and once a week Jack wrote. His first letter was angry – worried about Frank, about Maisie – but she replied, telling him that Maisie was fine. She had seemed better, had promised that if there was trouble she would write and then Rosie would come back. Trust me, she wrote. I’m only here because I had an urgent letter. But she did not tell him that it was from Joe.

  After that he sent her love and news of the assault courses they were clambering over, the football match his team had won, and she was glad that his letters were filled with news such as this. Not of battle which seemed to be in
every paper that she read.

  Nancy and she went to the Club and Sandra screamed and rushed over, her brace gone, her hair permed, her lipstick bright. She was in her first year at College, majoring in English. She was tanned, a gold watch hung loose on her wrist. They sipped vermouth from chilled glasses which stuck to the tables. They slid them to the edge to break the vacuum, and could only talk about the old times because their lives were so different now – Rosie was not at College, she did not have a gold watch – there was nothing between them and all she longed for was Jack.

  Nancy held her hand as they walked to the car and Rosie told her then of her love for him, but Nancy knew already.

  ‘Maybe it would have been Joe, if you’d stayed. He’s a good man. Pretty ambitious, but a good man. He got you over. That was kind.’

  Rosie nodded. Yes, it was kind, but he wasn’t Jack. He didn’t go back all those years, like Jack. Jack was her childhood, he was England. He was her life.

  By September the leaves were falling from the trees and Frank was well enough to sit in the back seat while Nancy drove and Rosie looked back at the house as they left, wondering when she would come again. Because she would be back, but next time she would come with Jack.

  In her room in Lower Falls her skis still stood, and the Cougar pennant hung as she had left it. The patchwork quilt was still on the bed and she sat and felt the ridges, then traced her hands along the pine headboard which Frank’s grandfather had carved. It was the same, all the same, but she had grown.

  The next day Mary returned from holiday and they kissed and hugged and Nancy built up the barbecue to catch the last of the mild autumn. As the light faded and the moths were dragged towards the lanterns, Rosie sat with Frank on the glider and listened because now he was home and there had been a stack of hate mail in the box, and he needed to talk.

  His words were calm, slow, but his jaw was clenched as he spoke of the fear and suspicion that was rising in America. He wanted to be back where the trees and the lake hid him, but that wasn’t possible. Someone had to print some sense.

  He gripped his empty pipe with one hand and her fingers with the other, carving points out of the air as the smell of steak rose with the charcoal smoke.

  ‘The fear and suspicion really got going when America heard that Russia was making headway with its own A bomb. Then there was China. How could the nationalists, supported by our wealth, go down to a peasant army? Now there’s Korea. The North with Commie backing sweeping us aside as though we were flies.’

  He was swinging the glider gently and his voice was calm. Tired but calm. ‘They’re frightened that another war will take all this wealth from them. Or maybe it’s “we”, hey, Nancy?’ he called. But Nancy shook her head.

  ‘You’ve never been afraid of poverty. You made all this, you could make it again. You might have to make it again if this goes on.’ She flipped over a steak and laughed. Frank laughed too and Rosie felt the love flow between them and thought of Maisie and Ollie.

  ‘That guy McCarthy, he’s cunning. He wants re-election. He picked out a hot chestnut to get in the papers. He’s telling us he knows over two hundred Commies in the State Department. He hasn’t named them. He can’t name them, but some people want to believe what he says.’

  ‘Steak’ll be ready in five minutes,’ called Nancy. Rosie nodded and Frank waved his pipe.

  ‘But why?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘There was a backlash after the First World War. We had the Ku Klux Klan then. Now we have the Red Menace.’ Frank rubbed his face with his hand. There were age spots on the back. ‘And it’s like I said before; it’s hard for people to believe that this great big country of ours can get beaten by Mao, or Korean peasants. Look at our troops in Korea, pinned down by fire power. Cut off, whole battalions surrounded, thousands of our boys captured. It can’t be the way we handle things, can it? It has to be betrayal from within. That’s the only answer for some.’ Nancy called them over now and Rosie helped him to his feet.

  ‘Look at Hiss, a Harvard Law School graduate from a WASP family under suspicion of spying. McCarthy loves that. He tells the people that we are being betrayed by the high-ups within. He tells them that we red-blooded Americans could wipe our boots on the Commies, except for this betrayal.’

  The barbecue was hot on their faces, the smell rich and sweet, and it seemed a world away from the harassment and fear of which Frank spoke, but that night there was a phone call, which Nancy took, and it was only when Frank went up to bed, his feet heavy, that she told Rosie that Uncle Bob had just been interviewed by the FBI. He had been reported last week for speaking out at an isolationist meeting back in 1940 and shouting that the Nazis must be beaten. It had been the day after Rosie had yelled at him from the stairs.

  The doctor came the following week and now Frank was able to walk down the block, and drive into work for a few hours, and he came home with Joe, who stayed to dinner, his shirt white, his teeth white, his hair bleached. They talked of the jobs Frank had given to two of his blacklisted friends and Joe frowned as he drank from the crystal glass.

  ‘I guess we should be seen to be even-handed,’ he said. ‘There should be a leader column alongside yours taking a more normal view. We’ll be closed if we take too much of a liberal stand.’

  Rosie put her own glass down. ‘Frank’s paper is even-handed.’ Her voice was sharp.

  Frank laughed. ‘He’s got a point. I haven’t been publishing any of the crazy letters. I guess we’ll let them roll. Maybe it’ll shake some of these burghers up, make them see what’s going on outside their picket fences. And maybe it’s time Joe had a column. We’ll give it a shot.’

  They moved to the sofas and sat in front of a fire which flickered and swept heat into the room, and Rosie thought of the small banked fire, the queues, and Jack. She looked at Joe. He was so big. She wanted to be back in England, to feel Jack’s arms around her, his lips on hers, to feel safe. There had been no letter from him last week, or this week, so that night in bed, she read all that she had received and slept with them beneath her pillow.

  There was no letter from him the next day either but there was one from Maisie.

  California

  USA

  7 Sept. 1950

  Dear Rosie,

  You will see from the letter that I am in America too. I couldn’t manage any longer. I love him you see. He came over for me again and this time I had to go back with him. Lee is Ed’s boy. Forgive me. Jack left, you left. Ollie is a good man. I’ve hurt him so much. It was never his fault, always mine. Jack loved Ed too. I wrote to Jack but he didn’t write back. Go to him.

  Maisie

  She left that day, throwing clothes into her cases, kissing Nancy and Frank, saying she’d come back. She had to be with Jack. She flew. The ship was too slow. Frank paid. She didn’t mind. She had to get back to Jack and all the time she cursed the red-haired man and the woman who smelled of lavender because they would bring pain back into Jack’s life and he might blame her.

  She took a taxi down the narrow streets. They had still not rebuilt the houses round the rec. Why hadn’t Maisie written? She would have come back. Rosie had known the man was Ed. Deep down she had known.

  She jumped from the taxi, paid, tipped, and ran down between the houses to the alley, her cases banging into her legs. She dropped them in Jack’s yard. He wouldn’t be there, but Ollie would.

  Ollie was sitting at the table, drunk. His face was unshaven. He smelt of stale beer. There were dishes in the sink. Lee’s toys were heaped in the corner of the room, broken and hacked apart. Maisie’s clothes were with them. There was no fire in the grate and it was cold.

  Rosie walked over to him, putting her arms around him, holding him, rocking him, but he didn’t cry, he just moaned.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Rosie whispered. ‘I’m so sorry, Ollie.’

  He was silent at last, then pushed himself away from her, turning back to the beer, pouring it into his glass, drinking again. She stooped to pic
k up the clothes, the toys.

  ‘Leave it. I’m going to burn them.’ His voice was cracked like an old record.

  She moved to the fire then, cleaning out the grate, emptying the ashcan into the dustbin, feeling it in her eyes and throat. She laid wood, then coal, lit it. Held a paper to draw it, heard the crackle then felt the heat.

  She boiled a kettle, washed the dishes, made tea. Came and sat at the table with him. She poured him a cup, and one for herself. It was hot and strong. He didn’t drink his. He didn’t even look. He just drank his beer. She should have stayed in England, but how could she? How the hell could she?

  ‘I knew it was that GI,’ he said as Rosie poured another cup. ‘Bastard.’

  He pushed his chair away, kicking at the toys, standing there, his hands limp by his sides.

  ‘I just knew,’ he repeated then he walked into the yard. Rosie followed.

  ‘I loved her, you see. It drove me mad. If I’d been kinder maybe she’d have stayed. But it burned inside me. She wouldn’t let me touch her, not after she met him.’

  Rosie held his arm. It was dark now. There were lights in Norah’s house.

  ‘The boy was his. I knew. It was the hair. They both had the same hair. I used to buy ham off him. I liked him. Trusted him, but only in the beginning. Now they’ve gone.’ He turned and looked at the house.

  ‘Your granddad and me bought these two houses. Things were all right then. Now I’ve got nothing and he’s dead.’ He was looking at her now, in the light from the kitchen. ‘It’s you bloody Yanks. You knew, didn’t you, and you never said. Maisie told me. You bloody Yanks, you stick together. Well get out of here. You don’t belong. Just get out.’ He was shouting, moving towards her, and Rosie backed away from him, out of the yard, because he was right. She had known and there was nothing she could say. But then he called, ‘There’s a letter here for you. From Jack.’