At the Break of Day

by Margaret Graham

  She looked around. There was a tent for lost children with a red pennant on the top. Her breasts were full and heavy, they were aching. She was angry with Joe.

  She pushed the pram into the tent, sat on a folding chair, put Lucia to her breast and thought of the woman who had looked at the baby and said how lucky they were. And though she had been angry with Joe it had been so good to pretend for that short moment that she was one of a pair. She looked at the ring on her finger. Was she always going to be alone, or would he come?

  They ate sandwiches and tea at a stall and Joe said, ‘I didn’t mean to say that the paper was more important than Frank. I guess you must know that.’

  Rosie ate the moist bread, the Wensleydale cheese.

  ‘Do I?’ she replied. ‘I’m not sure that I know anything any more.’

  Joe put down his cup and asked for coffee because he couldn’t drink the tea. It was ninepence. ‘Gee, that’s a lot.’

  He took it and turned back to her. ‘It’s just that it’s everything he’s worked for. He loves that paper. I love it. I work real hard now. It’s coming up good. It’s going to be a good investment.’

  ‘And what about McCarthy? Do you write against that poison, Joe? Do you shout that it’s wrong to victimise innocent people?’

  Joe bought another coffee and they moved away to let others near. ‘Frank writes against it. That’s enough.’

  They finished eating, then walked further but Rosie was tired and there was something wrong. She was still angry and she didn’t understand why.

  ‘I must get back now, Joe. I’ve some calls to make, some details for Luke’s tour to tie up and the other bands too.’

  He nodded, pushing a path through the crowds. ‘You shouldn’t have to work like this, not with a baby. It needs two.’

  Rosie shrugged. ‘I’m doing just fine.’

  ‘You sure are but it’s a lot to handle. You’re just swell.’ He leaned over and propped the Skylon upright, but it fell over again as she mounted the kerb on their way out.

  ‘Is it still OK for this evening?’ he asked.

  Rosie nodded. They had planned to go with Luke and Sandy downriver to Battersea Park to see the open air sculptures and then on to the fun-fair. She hadn’t wanted to go alone with Joe.

  Mrs Orsini looked after Lucia that evening and they took a cab to Battersea Park which exuded so much light that it bounced off the clouds and for a moment Rosie was with Frank and Nancy in New York again.

  As they arrived fireworks soared high into the air. They heard the bangs and the whizz and Joe said, ‘Guess they knew we were coming and this is the welcome mat.’

  Tonight he was different somehow, he talked of Frank’s expertise, his kindness. He said how much he respected him, how empty life would have been if anything had happened to him, and Rosie looked at him and smiled, her anger dying.

  ‘I’m glad you feel the same as I do.’

  They linked arms with Luke and Sandy and marched in step to the fun-fair singing ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, and by the time they arrived Joe knew the words.

  They sat on painted horses, clutched the spiralling poles, and couldn’t talk because the music was so loud, but they laughed. They all laughed and then they swung in boats, the ropes slipping between their hands. They shot ducks and she wouldn’t think of Jack. They threw darts and she won a teddy bear and Joe carried it for her. They laughed, sang, drank and she felt young again. So young and the lights were on the river and it was as though she was by the lake. She felt Joe’s arm around her, felt his kiss on her cheek.

  ‘It’s sure good to see you again, Rosie,’ he murmured, and she smiled.

  ‘Yes, it’s good to see a friend from America. It’s been so long. You were kind to tell me about Frank, and send my ticket over. I shall always be grateful to you for that.’ She touched his face. ‘Thank you.’

  Luke grabbed her, pointed towards a striped tent. ‘This we have got to see.’ He dragged her off and she laughed and touched his cheek too. It was good to have friends.

  They tried to guess the weight of the fat woman in the striped tent and ate candy floss which stuck to their faces in melted strands. They stood and watched the horses again, then had another go, and another. In the hall of mirrors they pulled faces, stuck out their legs, lifted their arms, and laughed until they ached.

  They went on to the Fairway of the South Bank and danced, she with Luke, Sandy with Joe. They jitterbugged, and there was no Palais MC to tap her on the shoulder, no forbidding notices pinned to walls.

  Joe tapped Luke’s shoulder and she danced with him. They jived and his arms were strong as he pulled her towards him, steered her back, moved with her and with the music. His wrists were dark against his shirt. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his face, threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘This is just great.’

  And it was. Then the music slowed and they danced cheek to cheek and he told her of the drive-in movies they had in the States now. How kids would drive in, take a bay, honk their horns to bring the girl car-hops to their windows, order their food, which was brought to them on a hook-on tray. How the kids kissed and loved and hooted their horns when they had gone all the way.

  She didn’t want to hear this. Not from Joe. He was too close. So she talked instead about the growing popularity of jazz in Britain. So many loved it and all the time she could feel his breath on her hair, the heat of his skin as he held her hand. All the time she could remember the feel of his lips and hands on her breasts and she was angry at Jack because he wasn’t here. Because he hadn’t written and she was lonely.

  But then she was angry at herself because she was dancing to music, swaying with the rhythm, laughing, when there was a war on. And nobody seemed to care. And she didn’t understand herself.

  ‘The Gloucesters’ casualty figures came in as the King inaugurated this Festival,’ Rosie said against Joe’s shirt.

  ‘Speak up, Rosie, I can’t hear you,’ he said, quickening his pace because the music was faster now, but they were jitterbugging again and she didn’t repeat her words.

  They danced until midnight and she wasn’t tired but her breasts were full again. They caught a cab, then walked home, all of them, and Soho was still awake and they all wanted to go on to a club, but her dress was wet from the milk and how could she tell them that? She asked them in for a coffee while she checked on Lucia, and asked Mrs Orsini if she would mind staying for longer. Mrs Orsini sat in Grandpa’s chair and smiled.

  ‘You look happy. You look twenty-one at last. That is good.’

  Rosie said again, ‘We’d like to go to a club. I know it’s very late, but I’ll do the kitchen in the morning.’

  Mrs Orsini smiled. ‘You feed her now then you go back down and you go to a jazz club with them and we will share the kitchen. I like to see you like this.’

  She put down her knitting and held up a hand as Rosie thanked her. ‘No. No thanks. You just do as an old witch tells you and be happy. Tonight you are young and you are free. Go and explore yourself. My Mario says the same.’

  Rosie picked Lucia up, felt her suck the nipple and she stroked the head of Jack’s child.

  They went on to the 51 Club. Luke knew the man on the door. Joe bought champagne and the ice clinked in the silver bucket. Rosie ran her finger down it. It was so cold. Joe eased off the stopper with a light thud. He poured the brimming bottle, letting the froth subside in each glass, then topping them up.

  ‘To us all,’ he said and they lifted their glasses.

  ‘To us all,’ Rosie repeated and included Jack.

  They listened to the jazz. The air was thick with smoke and with laughter, theirs included, and Luke said that perhaps there should be dancing at Mario’s. It was happening in other clubs. He nodded towards the floor.

  ‘Not enough room, unless we open up the annexe,’ Rosie said. ‘Still, no reason why not. I’ll talk to Mario. But I want to talk to this group first. They’re good.’

  L
uke laughed, but Joe didn’t. ‘Can’t you leave your work behind for one night?’

  Rosie looked at him. ‘It’s work I love. It’s work I need. There’s Lucia, you know.’

  He paused, then smiled, lifting the glass to her. ‘I understand,’ he said, but she wondered if he did.

  She worked her way through the tables, catching up with the saxophonist, a young man with glasses, as he led his group to the bar, and booked them for Luke’s tour that she and Harry, the promoter, were organising. She had a full programme now and she and Luke bought the next bottle of champagne because life had been good to them this summer. Rosie nodded, she had eight bands to organise now. It felt good.

  They joined the other dancers on the floor and the beat was insistent, the lights revolved, she was young, she was free and tonight she had friends and more than that, she had a partner to hold her, swirl her round, pour her drink, toast her, and the tiredness dropped from her as they danced until nearly dawn.

  Joe walked her home, waving to Luke and Sandy, shrugging away their thanks. Rosie was quiet because it was different now that they were alone. It was not so safe, so easy.

  The streets were emptying as they walked from one pool of light to the next and there were no ropes hanging on the lampposts. Rosie told Joe that when she and Jack had been children there had been some in Middle Street. They had tied them. She looked at her hands. She could still feel the rope.

  He stopped then, caught her arms, held her to him, stared into her face.

  ‘He’s gone. He hasn’t written. He won’t come back. Surely you know that now. You must make a life for yourself.’

  Rosie pulled away, looking up at the sky where the clouds still hung. ‘I don’t know that. I don’t know anything. If only I knew where he was, what he’s doing, what he’s feeling, I would know where I was going. No, I don’t know anything, Joe, only that I love him.’ She wished Luke and Sandy were still here, that they were all dancing and laughing again.

  She looked down again at her hands, then at Joe. ‘You’re going to Japan. Frank told me. See where he is. Find him for me?’

  He took her hands in his. He was warm, gentle. ‘We were friends, Rosie. It would have been more if you hadn’t left. Do you remember the beach?’

  She shook her head, but she did. Goddamn it, she did. She said, ‘I know he’ll write. I know he loves me. Find him for me, Joe.’

  She walked back towards the flat, back towards Jack’s child. Joe walked with her, his strides long, easy. He said nothing but kissed her cheek at the door.

  ‘I’ll be back in December. I’ll find out what I can.’

  CHAPTER 22

  It had been hard to accept Nigel’s death, to think that he would never go to Oxford or punt on the river as he had talked so often of doing. That he would no longer wake up in the morning and look towards the hills and say, ‘It’s quite exquisite.’

  Jack and Steve sat against the hut wall together in the baking heat of early September and marvelled that it was still only 1951. It seemed a very long time since they had first arrived in Korea. They felt so old and they were only twenty-one.

  As more days passed Steve talked of college, of the history course he would take. His parents farmed in the Mid-West and couldn’t understand that he wanted to move to New York, to feel cluttered by the buildings, to hole himself up and write novels.

  ‘They say, get a proper job. OK, so I will, but one day I’ll get there.’

  Jack threw pebbles at the marker Steve had dropped. He had struck twice. If he did it again it was Steve’s turn.

  ‘I’ve never really thought what I’d do. It was all going to wait until I finished the draft.’ He threw again. The pebble missed.

  ‘You got a lot of time to think now, bud.’

  The next pebble hit. They heard the click, heard a man rush past them with his arms outstretched, his mouth pursed, roaring like an engine. Two more men came close behind him. They looked at one another and grinned. It was silly time. They stood up, kicked down the pile of stones and joined in the swooping and whirling, dodging in and out of the others. One Corporal became a helicopter.

  The guards stood and watched, bemused. But then the planes started making staccato gun noises and the guards moved forward, pushing, shouting, and at a signal from the Corporal the men stopped dead. Their arms still outstretched until there was another signal, the jerking of a head. They stood to attention, their protest made for today; confusion generated. It made them feel less powerless.

  They were made to dig holes as punishment for the gun noises. The soil was dry and stony but they had all done this at basic training. There was nothing new in the world. They were ordered to fill the holes in. They had done this in basic training too.

  The next week they watched a tennis match, all the men lining either side of an imaginary court in the compound. They moved their heads in unison, watching a non-existent ball, clapping as the scores were called. This time there was no punishment but it would have been worth it, even if there had been. Jack wrote it down on the extra paper that he stole during essay writing.

  ‘Rosie might be able to make something of it,’ he told Steve.

  ‘You make something of it. I’ll help.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘We won’t be here that long. I’m better suited to the market stall.’

  They were still there in November, though, when the cold crackled in the air. By then the ground was too hard for them to dig as punishment and so they were made to stand upright until what little sun there was had gone from the day and frost coated their clothes. A man laughed at the Chinese guards who walked by, holding hands.

  Jack allowed Steve to help him draft out an article on the escapade because he wanted to discuss the confusion between cultures, the cruelty of laughter. They knew now that the fighting would go on for a long time and, therefore, they would be here for a long time too. They understood that now and were trying to stay sane, trying not to think of the news the new prisoners had told them when they had been marched into the compound.

  The peace talks were being held up by the Communists who wanted all their captured men to be returned, irrespective of whether or not they wished to be. The West remembered Yalta, and would not agree to this. It was insane that they were all kept here, day after day. But they mustn’t go insane, they knew that.

  ‘It’s like the First World War back there, mate,’ a Lance-Jack had told them. ‘We’re ranged in two lines along a static front lobbing everything we can get at one another, while the politicians talk. It’s a laugh a minute. Nice and quiet here, though.’

  But that was before he had sat through two hours of indoctrination in Chinese, two hours of translation, then attended interviews, then written essays. They spoke to him two weeks later when he was thinner, bored, restless, longing for a home which was very far away, longing for a letter, though no mail had yet been distributed. No, none of them must go insane. They must have something to work towards, to hang on to.

  A new Commandant arrived. He called each of them in for an interview. He smoked but Jack didn’t. There was no tobacco any more, only that which was offered by the lecturers, the interrogators, to those who volunteered to give propaganda interviews.

  The man had smooth olive skin. His voice was soft. He smiled. Jack smiled. Would it be the same as it had always been?

  ‘What does your father do?’

  ‘He sells vegetables.’

  ‘What does your mother do?’

  No, it was not the same.

  ‘My mother does nothing,’ Jack said, not knowing now what Maisie did. Was she still laughing with her head thrown back? Did she still make bread and dripping? Do Americans eat that? He must ask Steve. He smiled because it didn’t hurt to think of her any more.

  ‘Why you smile? You are proud that mother not work? That mother lazy?’

  ‘My mother is not lazy. I’m smiling at something private.’

  ‘There is nothing private. You are being cleansed here. All
is open. Why you smile?’

  ‘I smile because I love my mother.’

  The Chinese looked at the interpreter, then back at Jack. Then down at his sheet.

  ‘Why your mother not work?’

  ‘She has a child.’

  ‘She could work with your father.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Jack shrugged. He couldn’t tell this man his mother had gone away with a GI. That she lived in the land where the capitalist warmongers thrived. That she had chosen to do this. He had learned here that truth was sometimes best avoided. Rosie had known that. She had been right.

  ‘How much land your family got?’

  ‘As big as this room.’ Jack looked round. ‘Yes, as big as this room.’

  He could see the shed, the fence, Lee’s toys. He could smell Grandpa’s roses. Were they still there?

  ‘How many cows your family got?’

  ‘We get milk in bottles.’ Yes, he could still smell the roses, and yes they would still be there. Rosie would make sure of that. And no, he wouldn’t go insane, not when he had her to return to.

  ‘How many pigs?’

  ‘No pigs.’

  ‘What jewels you own?’

  ‘No jewels.’

  ‘What coins you own?’

  ‘No coins.’ But there was the nailer’s penny. Did Rosie still have that? He knew she would.

  The Commandant wrote, his head down, dandruff on his shoulders, then he sat back in his chair. ‘You poor peasant. You should like our ways. You should fight the capitalists.’

  Jack shrugged. The questions had begun differently but the end had been the same.

  He told Steve not to mention his horses, his acres, his cows. He told him not to be too generous with the truth, not to get angry, not to shout, because he knew his friend dreamed of the pit and woke groaning. Jack did too.

  ‘Don’t let him sting you into saying anything,’ Jack said.

  But the Commandant did sting Steve and he did shout and rage and was dragged to the pit, stripped to the waist when the cold was deep in their bones. He was there while the Americans celebrated Thanksgiving with a service and songs, not feasts.