‘Me an’ Joey are expecting,’ Edie said. ‘Onny don’t say nothing to our Tess, yet awhile. I mean for to say, it’s her day an’ I wouldn’t want to take the limelight.’
Rosie kissed her at once and told her she was a dear little tender-heart and asked when it was due.
‘Not till May,’ Edie said. ‘Plenty a’ time to talk about it later. It’s just I did so want you to know.’ And was kissed again.
The tables were nearly clear, and Mr Turner had climbed up on a chair. ‘Christmas carols,’ he called. ‘Our Mr Boniface has got his fiddle, ent yer Bert? God Rest Ye Merry, if you please.’
The new year of 1925 began with a snowstorm that kept Rosie and the girls indoors for nearly three days. Jim went to the market with the collar of his greatcoat pulled up round his ears and a thick muffler covering his mouth and Kitty looked out a very old shawl and wore it over her coat and hat ‘fer another layer’. They were both glad to be back in the flat by the fire when their work was over.
‘Bli, but it’s cold,’ Kitty said, holding out her hands to the fire. ‘We’ll all get chilblains if this goes on. I couldn’t feel my feet at all comin’ home. An’ it’s that slippy on the pavements it’s a wonder we ain’t all got broken legs.’
Rosie put hot water bottles in their beds at night, kept their clothes clean, warm and dry and their socks and stockings neatly darned, made lots of tea and hung on. But it was the middle of January before she could go out job hunting and then it took her several days before she found the sort of work she could do. It had to be in the evenings when Jim and Kitty were around to look after the girls, and it had to be fairly nearby so that she didn’t have to spend too much time travelling. In the end, she settled on a job pulling pints in a nearby pub.
After the ease of modelling she found it tiring, especially if she’d had a difficult day with the girls, but it paid the rent, which calmed Jim’s anxiety, bought an occasional storybook for Gracie, who loved being read to and was beginning to recognise a word or two, and it kept her mind off her altered circumstances. After a week she got used to the routine and began to enjoy it, saucing the customers and keeping the bar in order; after a month she felt as if she’d been doing it all her life. She liked the routine of a steady job and was grateful for the steady pay. If someone had asked her opinion about what she was doing, she would have said, ‘Long may it continue.’
And then just as she’d sorted that out, a letter arrived.
It was a mild April morning and Rosie had just filled the copper ready to do the weekly wash, when Mr Rogers called up the stairs to say the postman had been and there were three letters for her. It was a dratted nuisance because it meant she had to dry her hands and take the children downstairs with her, carrying Mary and leading Gracie by the hand, because she couldn’t leave them on their own in the flat with the copper on the boil.
‘Free letters,’ Gracie said as her mother picked them up from the bottom stair. ‘One, two, free.’
‘They’d better be good,’ she said to Gracie as she put them on the kitchen table. ‘Now stay there and play with your bricks like good girls till I get the washing started and then we’ll see what they’re like.’
The one postmarked Worthing was from Edie and more or less what she expected. She was ‘going on well enough’ but felt as big as a house, ‘what is no surprise being it’s so near now.’ The one from Binderton was a surprise.
‘I just had to write and tell you,’ Tess began, ‘on account of I can’t keep it to myself. Me and Sydney are expecting. We’re both so happy you wouldn’t believe. Mrs Taylor says she reckons it will be in October. I am feeling very fit.’
‘Well, well, well,’ Rosie said to her children. ‘You’re going to have two cousins. Imagine that.’
Mary smiled at her without understanding but Gracie asked. ‘What’s a cousin?’
‘Your aunties are going to have babies,’ Rosie said but she was speaking vaguely because she’d noticed that the third letter was postmarked New York and that it had a foreign stamp on it. It had to be Gerry. She didn’t know anybody else who’d be writing to her from New York. The thought made her feel cross. He’d left her for ten months without a word and with a telephone that never rang. Damn nearly a year and now I suppose he thinks he can write a letter an’ I’ll come running back to him. Is that it? Well if that’s the case, he’s got another think coming.
‘Like Mary?’ Gracie asked.
Rosie dragged her mind back to the conversation with an effort. ‘What?’
‘Babies,’ Gracie said patiently. ‘Like Mary.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Rosie said. ‘Only smaller. Let me read my letter like a good girl and then I’ll check the washing’s all right and we’ll read Billy Goats Gruff.’ And she opened the envelope.
‘My dear Rosie,’ it said.
‘So much has happened during the last few months (Few months!) I hardly know where to begin. Briefly, I was offered a very large commission to come to the States and paint the portraits of all the managing directors of a large oil company. I thought it would take me about six months. Unfortunately it has not turned out in quite the way I envisaged it. (Well serve you right.) For a start they wanted far more portraits than they had originally suggested and every single one of the sitters has been difficult in the extreme. As far as I can see, it will be another year before the work is done. (Then why are you writing to me now?)
‘In the meantime I am being pressured to complete the four seasons which I would much rather paint, providing you will still model them for me, (Ah! I see) and I also have other work waiting for me in the UK.
‘I trust you and your babies are well.
‘Yours affectionately,
‘Gerry.’
She put the letter on the table, with Billy Goats Gruff beside it and went to the bathroom to check on the washing, her thoughts in turmoil. She was still cross with him for leaving her all that time without a word, but those rich Americans had obviously taken him for a ride and that was unfair. He was too good an artist and too conscientious to be treated like a hired hand. By the time she’d hung out the washing, she’d decided that she would model for the Summer and Winter pictures, even if Jim didn’t want her to. Gerry had asked her kindly and she needed the money. And besides, it made her feel special to think she would be the model for all four pictures. But the affair was over. There was no doubt about that. It wasn’t fair to her poor Jim to cheat on him, not when he worked so hard and was so good to the kids. It made her feel ashamed now even to remember it.
‘Billy Goats Gruff?’ Gracie asked, when she reappeared in the kitchen.
‘Yes,’ Rosie said. ‘A’ course. I promised.’ Billy Goats Gruff was easy.
Chapter 19
It was a chilly spring that year, but it was followed by quite a gentle summer. Jim wangled a day off work for Gracie’s fourth birthday and he and Rosie took her to the zoo because she wanted to see the bears again. She and Mary stood as close to the railings as they could get and watched, open-mouthed, as the great beasts padded about on their wide paws and after that they had a ride on an elephant, which Mary said was ‘the bestest’. She was tumbling into speech now, just as Gracie had done, and chattered from the moment she woke until she was teased into bed at the end of the day.
At the end of May, Edie had her baby and they all went down to Worthing the next Sunday to see him. He was a long, rather skinny baby and they’d called him Frank. He looked exactly like his father, who was very proud of him and kept telling everyone how marvellous Edie was. ‘I thought I loved her when we got wed,’ he said to Rosie, ‘but now…’
They went down to the seaside whenever the money would run to it that summer. Rosie knitted yellow swimming costumes for the girls and treated herself to one of the new swimsuits, which looked very daring. And after their second trip, she had her hair cut short in one of the new bobs, which made it a lot easier to dry when she came out of the water.
And then the autumn blew in to scatter t
he bright leaves along the pavements and Kitty dropped a bombshell.
They were sitting at their fish a ship supper round the kitchen table and Mary was cadging chips from her father in her usual way, when Kitty put down her knife and fork, licked her fingers clean and said, ‘I got a bit a’ news for yer.’ The girls went on eating, but Jim and Rosie looked up at her curiously and waited to be told what it was.
‘I been writin’ to your sister, off an’ on, fer quite a long time,’ Kitty said. ‘Not the young one, though. I mean to say your Tess. She got a lot a’ sense in her head, you ask me, your Tess. We been talkin’ a lot. Well not talkin’ exactly, sort a’ writin’ things. Not that your Edie ain’t sensible. You onny got to see how she’s lookin’ after that kiddie of hers ter know that. It’s jest that me an’ Tess… Me an’ Tess… Well we got more in common so ter speak. We both know beggars can’t be choosers, fer a start. Not in our generation anyway. We got a lot in common. Ideas an’ such. Not right at the moment, I grant yer that. I’m more of a wallflower at the moment ter tell the truth. But we could have.’
It was such a rigmarole that Rosie was baffled and looked it. But Jim laughed.
‘Spit it out, our kid,’ he said. ‘What you on about?’
Kitty gulped and blurted out her news in one breath. ‘Mr Matthews has asked me ter marry him an’ I’ve said yes.’
Rosie was so surprised she didn’t know what to say. Jim had an immediate answer. ‘If that’s the case kid, it’s about time you brought him home to meet us.’
‘He’s a good bloke, Jim,’ Kitty said, and her voice sounded defensive. ‘He’s been ever so good ter me. You think about it. Givin’ me a job an’ all. An’ he ain’t as old as Mr Turner, not by a long chalk, an’ he’s turned out lovely. Mr Turner I mean. You got to admit. An’ he’s had a terrible time of it what wiv one thing an’ another, his wife walking out on him an’ takin’ the kiddie an’ all. Mr Matthews, I mean, not Mr Turner, although I suppose he could say the same losin’ his wife an’ all. An’ you’re gonna need my room soon, the way the kiddies are growin’.’
She’s nervous, Rosie thought, watching Kitty’s face. She thinks we’re going to object to him. Or not like him. ‘Bring him over for supper,’ she said.
‘I’ll ask him,’ Kitty said. ‘He’s ever such a good bloke Rosie. Really. An’ I can’t stay on the shelf fer ever.’
Later that night, when they were on their own together and in bed, Jim and Rosie had a long, whispered conversation about it. They were both upset, he because he didn’t want his little sis to feel they were pushing her out — ‘an’ you heard what she said about the kiddies growin’ — she because of something Kitty hadn’t said. ‘Not one word about how much he loved her or how she loved him an’ that’s usually the first thing they say. Look at us an’ Edie.’ In the end they gave up trying to make sense of what they’d heard and decided to reserve judgement until they’d met this Mr Matthews and seen him for themselves.
‘We might be pleasantly surprised,’ Rosie hoped.
They weren’t.
For a start, Mr Matthews wouldn’t come to supper in Newcomen Street but insisted on taking them to dinner in a London restaurant, which meant that Rosie had to find someone to look after the kids for the evening and although Mrs Rogers offered at once and said she didn’t mind at all, it was still worrying to leave them. Then he assured Kitty that the restaurant was a top-hole place and it turned out to be no such thing. It was a long narrow room, and very poorly lit, although not dark enough to hide the stains on the tablecloths. After the luxury and good service she’d been used to at the RAC Club, Rosie was decidedly unimpressed. Then, instead of letting them choose their meal for themselves, he ordered for them and that didn’t please her either. And he spent the entire evening talking about himself.
‘Although I say it myself, I think I can claim to be a good judge of character,’ he told them. ‘Kitty will make an excellent wife. She has all the attributes.’
Then he revealed that he’d already arranged the wedding for the third Saturday in October, ‘and seen to such catering as we shall require’, that it would be in a registry office because he didn’t hold with churches and that he was house hunting because ‘as a married man I need a good house’. By the end of the evening Rosie loathed him.
‘He’s a bully,’ she whispered to Jim when they were alone in their bedroom that night. ‘An’ it ent as if he’s anything to look at, with that nasty mean little mouth turned down all the time and those nasty piggy little eyes. An’ he’s hardly got any hair.’ She was hot with anger that Kitty could be making such a mistake. ‘I can’t think what she sees in him.’
‘A meal ticket,’ Jim said, ‘an’ a house of her own, an’ a weddin’ ring on her finger. Lots a’ gels ’ud settle fer that these days. It’s what comes a’ killin’ off all the young men in the war.’
‘We’ve got to stop her, Jim,’ Rosie said, so urgently she was hissing. ‘We can’t just stand back an’ let her marry him. I mean, he’s just vile. We got to do something.’
‘There ain’t nothing we can do,’ he said, sadly.
‘We should tell her what we think of him for a start.’
‘That ’ud only make her more determined to do it. She’s much too pig-headed to be told what ter do. We’ll just have to leave well alone an’ hope she sees sense for herself.’
‘That’s stupid,’ Rosie said. ‘We ought to put up a fight. She’s a dear kind woman, an’ helpful an’ lovin’ an’ hard-workin’, an’ he’s a bully. We can’t hand her over to a man like that. We should tell her what’s what.’
‘We ain’t handin’ her over,’ Jim said. ‘She’s goin’ willin’. Don’t you understand? Of her own free will. She’s not gonna listen to us. She wants ter do it.’
‘It’s madness,’ Rosie hissed. ‘An’ I think we ought to stop it.’
Jim made a resigned grimace. ‘We got no option,’ he said and turned on his side to sleep.
Rosie was so angry she couldn’t sleep for a long time. And worse was to follow. She had to stand by and watch the preparations for this wedding and do nothing and say nothing, which was very difficult for her. Kitty came home from work more excited than they’d seen her in a long while, to report that Mr Matthews had bought a lovely new house in a road called Totterdown Street, ‘what’s jest round the corner from where you was in hospital in Tooting Jim. Imagine that!’ and she was going to see it on Sunday.
She came back after her visit, wonderfully happy and bubbling with information. ‘It’s got a proper kitchen wiv a sink an’ a copper, an’ one a’ them cookers, an’ a larder what you can walk right in an’ everythin’. An’ a livin’ room, an’ a parlour wiv great big winders. An’ a bathroom upstairs, wiv a lovely white bath, all new an’ clean, an’ a washbasin, an’ a WC. An’ there’s a garden out the back. I’m gonna have me own garden Rosie, jest like you done in the country. Imagine that. I can grow all sorts out there. You’ll need to come over an’ show me how. But you will, won’tcher? Ain’t it jest grand?’
How could they disagree with her?
She was in such a happy mood, that Rosie felt she could talk about the wedding without showing her how she was feeling. ‘D’you want to have a lend of my weddin’ suit?’ she offered.
But Kitty wasn’t sure about that and her face changed even thinking about it. ‘I shall have to ask Mr Matthews,’ she said. ‘He’s a bit partic’lar about what I wear.’
‘Well let me know if you do,’ Rosie said and changed the subject. ‘Tell me about the garden. Do you want to make a vegetable patch?’ But she was thinking, she’ll marry him now, poor Kitty. And hard on the heels of that, came another equally unpleasant thought. How are we going manage the rent? And then she was flooded with shame to be mercenary. That ol’ gad-about de Silva had just better come home quick, that’s all.
But that old gad-about was still obdurately in America. And in the meantime, family life was rushing her along.
At the start of O
ctober, Rosie had a postcard from Tess to say her baby had been born and it was a dear little girl and they were going to call her Anna, so they all went down to Binderton the next Sunday to see her. She was a very ordinary baby, but both her parents were completely enamoured of her, which made Rosie admire old Sydney more than ever.
‘He’s so like Pa,’ she said to Jim as they walked through the fields to her old home. ‘Only not so pale.’ Poor Pa grew paler and more fragile with every visit although he was always pleased to see them and maintained that he and young Johnnie were ‘managin’ all right, all things considered’.
And then it was the third Saturday in October and she and Jim were standing in the registry office to watch their poor Kitty marry Mr Matthews who turned out to be ‘I, Herbert’ and looked stiff and pompous in a new blue suit and a high starched collar and didn’t smile once the whole time they were there. Rosie said, ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ all the way home and was touched when her daughters held her hands and gave her their most loving looks to comfort her, because they sensed something was wrong even though they didn’t know what it was.
And there was still the rent to pay and the gad-about was still gadding.
Christmas was a very lean time. Rosie made a Christmas pudding from the cheapest ingredients she could find in the market and bought two little Bakelite dolls there, marked ‘made in Hong Kong’ and knitted clothes for them on the quiet out of scraps of wool so that at least she had a present for her girls, but the meal was scanty. In January, funds were so low she took her wedding suit and shoes back to Petticoat Lane and sold them for as much as she could get, which was disappointingly little. And then, just before Easter, the phone rang. At last. She was so relieved she ran to answer it.
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