by Annie Murray
He produced another key, and she stood waiting behind him, looking at the weave of his suit, depressed by the smelly seediness of the staircase and wondering what to expect from the room on the other side of the door.
‘People have to knock to come in here,’ he told her proudly.
Once he had pushed the door open and switched on the light she looked round in real surprise.
In contrast to the staircase, the room was freshly decorated in cream paint, and she found her feet suddenly cushioned by what looked like brand new carpet with a crimson background patterned with fashionable skater’s trail curves in black and white. All the furniture was brand new as well: a sideboard, its wooden veneer still gleaming with the sheen of newness, and two easy chairs covered in a vivid green woven fabric. In the middle of the room stood an enormous desk behind which Michael evidently presided from a chair covered in bright red and black material.
‘Blimey, Michael!’ Rose said, laughing. ‘This furniture’s a bit bright, isn’t it?’
Proudly he joined in her laughter. ‘Right up to the minute that,’ he told her. ‘Makes a change from all that blooming depressing brown stuff, doesn’t it? Makes me think of nothing but the war that does. Mary still likes it though. So I thought, well, if I have to put up with all that old-fashioned look at home, then I’ll have my own little place here where I can do just what I want!’
Although the room did not seem all that warm, Michael took off his coat and hung his jacket over the back of the red chair. Rose watched his broad, muscular frame with some curiosity as he went over to the sideboard and squatted down to open one of the low cupboards. He was really such a stranger to her.
‘I’ll get us another drink,’ he said. ‘Will you be having a nip of Scotch? Haven’t got much else.’
‘Oh – no ta,’ Rose replied quickly. She already felt light-headed from the pace he had set drinking in the Mermaid. ‘If I have any more I’ll get bad.’
Unbuttoning her coat, she walked round Michael’s very tidy desk. From one of the frames facing his chair Mary smiled sweetly back at her. Face like an angel, Rose thought. Poor cow. Her wavy hair looked as if it must be a middling brown, and the camera had caught her glancing up, as if it had taken some persuasion to make her look in that direction at all. Round her neck you could just see a small crucifix gleaming at the bottom of the picture.
She’s lovely, Michael, Rose wanted to say. She’s beautiful. But she couldn’t bring herself to speak. To say such things would be to bring Mary into the room between them.
There was a second photograph, evidently more recent, of Mary holding the baby Geraldine, with Joseph leaning into the picture beside her. The little boy’s expression was solemn. Geraldine had that startled kind of baby face, all eyes. Michael’s eyes. Mary was smiling. Did being married to Michael make her happy, Rose wondered?
She realized Michael was watching her. She glanced up at him. His eyes looked slightly glassy: at once sad and lustful. She pitied him, but with a sense of panic. Everything about this was wrong.
‘Come away from the window,’ he said. She didn’t resist when he took her by the hand and led her to a corner of the room. She wanted, needed him to hold her, to allow herself to feel excited by him. She wanted that dreamlike, swimming feeling which would allow her to make love with him, give herself up to the swell of it and forget everything else.
As soon as he moved against her and they began to kiss, she felt her body come alive with all the sensations she had not known for so long. His hands reached insistently inside her clothing to touch her skin, to close over her breasts, and her eyes closed as she gave way to the pleasure of it.
Michael released her slightly, his eyes half closed. ‘God. It’s been so long since she’s let me.’
Something like icy water sluiced through her mind and she was out of the dream, eyes wide open and seeing herself and Michael with clinical clarity as if from a distance. She was in a room above a betting shop, with a man’s body pressed to hers, his black hair close to her cheek. Black hair which could almost have been Falcone’s but wasn’t. A man who aroused her, filled her with sexual desire, but whom she did not love. She thought of the last time she was forced to the floor by a man in an office where photographs of his family looked on from the desk, and she knew that whatever it was she’d desired of these few minutes, she could only ever see them as cheap afterwards. Soiled and cheap.
Michael felt her stiffen and straighten up, withdrawing from him. She pulled on her blouse, buttoning it over her breasts.
Michael’s eyes opened and he made a despairing sound. ‘Oh God, Rosie,’ he implored her. ‘Don’t pull out on me now. Please.’
She removed his arms from round her and moved away, rearranging herself. ‘It’s not that I don’t want you. You know that. But I can’t do it. I feel as if everyone’s here watching us – Mary and Alfie and everyone. I’m sorry, Michael.’
He turned from her abruptly and went to pick up his glass, draining the last gulp from it. He lit a cigarette and sat down on one of the green chairs in silence. She knew he was not going to try to force her.
‘I don’t go with women, you know,’ he said finally. ‘That’s not the way I was brought up. It’s just – you’re different Rosie, I can talk to you, and we go back a long way. There was always something there between us, wasn’t there?’
‘There was. And there is, in a way. But I can’t do this. We’d be doing wrong to so many other people.’
There was an awkward silence before Michael spoke. ‘What you said, about your husband, him being bad and that. I mean you and him, you don’t . . . ?’
‘Not any more, no.’
‘Then why?’
‘He’s still my husband. He’s had enough bad luck without his wife going bad on him. And there’s Mary. I looked at that picture and I thought I’d like her if I met her. That’s daft I know, because what difference does it make? But I couldn’t do it to her either. Or to myself.’
‘But they’d never know. I don’t want to hurt anyone either. It’s between you and me, Rosie. Even if it’s only the once, it’s just for us.’ His blue eyes suddenly looked very young in their appeal.
‘I’m not going to come here any more, Michael.’
‘Not come?’ He made to stand up and she turned away from him. ‘What? Not even for a drink now and then?’
‘I can’t. If I keep coming it’ll always come to this, won’t it? Because it’s always there between us. Soone or later I’d give in to you and I’d hate myself for it. And you wouldn’t be happy either. Not in the end.’
Michael shook his head. ‘You always were more grown-up than me, Rosie. I can’t help admiring you for it. Come here, will you? Just for a moment?’
She went to him and they held each other again briefly.
‘Go and give Mary some of your time,’ she told him as they released each other. ‘And your kids. They’re what matters. If you stick with them I bet things’ll work out.’
Michael kissed her. ‘I hope you get that job of yours. I’ll miss you.’
She told him she would walk back alone and he let her out of the office and the door on to the street.
She was late home again. Grace was sitting in her usual position by Alfie’s bed. The fire had burned down to a glow in the grate, and beside Grace lay a long skein of knitting which she had abandoned out of sleepiness.
She said nothing when Rose came in through the door, but her whole manner spoke of reproach. She bundled her things into the cloth bag and placed it pointedly beside the door. Still in silence the two of them settled Alfie down for the night. Usually they talked and made tea while Alfie dozed, but tonight he lay watching them as they went about their tasks, their eyes not meeting each other’s nor a word passing between them.
They re-dressed his sores, though this time the sheets had stayed dry and did not need to be changed. When he started coughing again they supported him between them by his skeletal shoulders and dosed him with linctus, waiting until he
was calm again.
Eventually Rose asked Grace, ‘D’you want a cuppa?’
‘No ta.’ Grace took her apron off. ‘I’ll be glad to get home to my bed. And not before time either.’ Rose could hear the anger pressed into her voice.
‘By the way. I’m stopping the classes. I’m ready to go for a better job now.’
Normally Grace would have looked pleased for her and asked questions about where and how much. ‘That’ll be a relief for everyone, won’t it?’
Rose sighed. ‘I can be home evenings.’
Grace continued to look huffy, busying herself with her bag. ‘Well – we’ll see about that, won’t we?’
Then she was gone.
Rose boiled some water on the gas and made tea. She poured for herself and Alfie and helped him, spooning the sweet liquid into his mouth. Often when she came in he was sleepy and hardly seemed to notice she was there. But tonight he was wide awake, partly perhaps because of his troubled breathing. She knew he was watching her as she moved round, tidying away the cups and getting the room ready for the morning because it was always such a rush.
She went over to him. ‘Would you like me to turn you again? Would it help you to breathe better?’
‘No. I’m OK.’ He carried on staring up at her. His gaze seemed to hold a knowing sort of wisdom which made her feel ashamed. In the end she could bear it no longer.
‘What? What, Alfie?’
In his stumbling, slurred way he brought out the words, ‘Wanted . . . something . . . more than . . . half alive . . . did you?’
She knelt and laid her head down on the bed next to the thin curve of his body. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’
For a moment he managed to stroke her hair before his arm went into spasm again.
‘You deserve . . . better,’ he said. When she looked up at him she saw he was crying too.
‘I’m going to be here now,’ she told him. ‘Evenings and all. I’m going to get a better job and work hard – for all of us. I’ll make things better if I can.’
She took one of his stiff hands in her own. ‘Grace makes you a better wife than I do, doesn’t she?’
She looked into Alfie’s wet face, and reached across to wipe away his tears.
‘But you’re . . . the wife . . . I want. Always. You know. I love . . . you.’
Thirty-Six
George Lucas stood outside the entrance to Winson Green Prison for the first time in over four years and heard the heavy gate shudder behind him. He stood for a moment or two in the overcast March morning, turning his pinched face this way and that, trying to take in the fact that after all these months he could make choices about his own movements. He appeared weighed down by the responsibility of it.
He looked even thinner after his time inside, giving the impression that he had grown taller, like a plant that has bolted up in poor light, and his skin had a yellowish, waxy look. Under his arm he carried a small bundle of the few possessions he had with him when he went into prison, and these he carried wrapped in a strip of white towelling. With his old, threadbare jacket pulled close round him and a crushed-looking brown felt hat pulled over his cropped hair, he began to walk slowly away from the prison in the direction of Birch Street.
The same morning Rose made her way into the middle of Birmingham. She stopped at the entrance to some narrow offices squeezed in near the bottom end of Temple Street. Screwed to the wall beside the heavy wooden door was a brass plaque which read, ‘LAURENCE ABEL AND MATTHEW WATERS: SOLICITORS’.
Rose checked there were no stray bits of fluff on the full navy blue skirt she was wearing, and adjusted the collar of her white blouse, relieved they wouldn’t be able to see the mend in the right sleeve under her thick navy cardigan. On her head she wore a little felt hat with a narrow brim in a royal blue which looked striking against her jackdaw hair and, to finish off the outfit, some high-heeled black shoes. She wished the shoes had been navy as well, but the neighbours had rallied round to help her out and lend her clothes for her interview and she had had to take what she could get. She peered at her faint reflection in the window of the corridor leading to the office. Nothing seemed to be amiss, so she patted the hat gently and said in a whisper, ‘Come on, Rose Meredith. Get yourself in there.’
She was precisely on time. When the door opened she found she was facing a tall blonde woman of about forty with an immaculately made-up face, who looked at her appraisingly and then held out her hand with what Rose could only feel was disdain.
‘Good morning. Mrs Meredith?’ The ‘Mrs’ was definitely unenthusiastic. ‘I’m Miss Crosby.’
Miss Crosby had a small outer area to work in off which led the two offices of Mr Waters and Mr Abel. Each had a slim wooden sign on his door. Miss Crosby sat down behind her heavy black Olivetti with an affected caress of the back of her skirt. Every hair on her head sat in precisely the right place.
Brassy cow, Rose found herself thinking.
‘You have a very satisfactory recommendation from Sparkhill Commercial School,’ Miss Crosby said. ‘Your shorthand and typing speeds are well within our requirements. Have you kept them up?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘I’ve only just left the school.’
The woman’s stony blue eyes watched her coldly. ‘You’ve been employed as an invoice typist in the pool of a small firm. Do you really imagine you’re capable of taking a job as a personal assistant to a professional solicitor?’ She spoke the words ‘personal assistant’ as if the position was second only to membership of the royal family.
‘I think I can do the job,’ Rose told her. ‘I’ve got good speeds, I’m well organized and I’m a very good worker.’
‘Perhaps I should make it clear what is required here. I have been secretary to Mr Waters, the senior partner, for several years. It is only in the past month that he has gone into partnership with Mr Abel, who has come to join us from Manchester. Mr Waters will be retiring in a couple of years – that’s why Mr Abel is now named first in the practice.’
Rose had the definite impression that Miss Crosby’s nose had been put out of joint by all these changes.
‘Mr Abel needs his own personal assistant, since I am fully occupied with all Mr Waters’ affairs. If we were to take you on – and I have my doubts as to whether you’d be up to it, quite honestly, Mrs Meredith – you would be working under me. Is that clear?’
Rose nodded. ‘Do I have to be seen by Mr Abel?’
‘Oh, that won’t be necessary,’ Miss Crosby told her briskly. ‘Mr Waters and Mr Abel leave all that sort of thing to me.’
Miss Crosby seemed on the point of pronouncing one way or another as to Rose’s prospects with Abel and Waters when one of the inner doors opened and an energetic figure bounded out of the office. Rose saw a man with a round, cheerful face wearing a suit which looked good quality but was somehow comically ill-fitting on him, who bustled across the room, a newspaper tucked loosely under one arm.
‘No, no, don’t get up,’ he said. ‘I’m Laurence Abel. So, Miss Crosby, is this my new secretary or do you have a whole line of others waiting breathlessly outside?’
‘I was just discussing with Mrs Meredith whether she is really suitably qualified for the position.’
Just then their interviewee, who had been looking anxiously up at Mr Abel, let out a loud gasp. Rose’s hand rose automatically to her mouth to apologize for the sound.
‘What’s the matter, Mrs Meredith?’ Laurence Abel joked. ‘Is my presence too much for you?’
‘I’m sorry. It’s just – you’ll think I’m very odd, but I noticed your newspaper.’
Laurence Abel frowned as if he had forgotten he was carrying the thing. He pulled it out and spread it out on the desk. It was a copy of Corriera della Sera.
‘It’s Italian,’ Rose explained unnecessarily.
Miss Crosby was looking at her as if she thought Rose had lost her mind. But she had Laurence Abel’s avid attention.
‘I used to
speak it.’ Rose glanced anxiously at Miss Crosby. ‘I was there for nearly two years. In the war.’
‘Good Lord!’ Mr Abel cried. Rose was almost sure his feet left the ground in his enthusiasm. ‘How marvellous! You mean you really speak it? Can you remember it?’
Suddenly he launched into a list of questions, mostly in energetic Italian, but with the odd English word thrown in when he got stuck. Having heard Rose’s replies he said, ‘You’re obviously a darn sight better at it than I am. Come on into my office for a minute.’
He led her into what seemed a surprisingly orderly room for so chaotic-looking a character: the walls lined with shelves of all his files and reference books with gold lettering on the spines.
‘You know, I really should be working,’ Mr Abel said, leaning back at his desk, his podgy stomach pushing out the front of his shirt. ‘But I can’t throw up an opportunity like this.’
Rose found herself telling him about the ATS and a little about Il Rifugio and her feeling that she belonged in the country.
‘I know what you mean about the sense of belonging,’ Mr Abel agreed eagerly. ‘I had exactly the same feeling. I go back as often as I can. Couldn’t do without it.’
‘You go back?’ Rose was amazed. She never imagined such a thing. Italy was part of the war, not accessible at any other time.
‘About once a year. Managed a quick visit before moving down here. It’s not quite the other side of the world you know.’
‘It is when you’ve got no money.’
Laurence Abel looked at her in silence for a moment. ‘If you came to work here, would you agree on a condition that when we’re not actually dictating letters, we’ll speak in Italian?’
Rose grinned at this bizarre request. ‘That’d be lovely.’
*
She almost danced into number five that evening to tell Grace the news.
‘I’ve got the job!’ she cried before she was even properly through the door.
And then stopped abruptly. Grace was standing by the table wearing her apron and a grimmer, angrier expression than Rose could ever remember seeing on her face before. Sid was sitting on the other side of the room by the fire, but was for once intent on what was going on. And at the table sat George, his hat lying in front of him, a cigarette in his mouth, his defiant eyes staring down at the table.