The War Before Mine

by Caroline Ross

  ‘You knew he was missing all along, didn’t you?’

  ‘Had a good idea.’

  ‘No. You knew.’

  ‘All right then, I knew. But I wanted to get to know you, didn’t I?’ He sat back in his seat, picked up his beer. ‘And I had some good news for you. Bastard isn’t dead, least as far as I know he isn’t. Not like Murray – old Teach – your Philip tell you about him? Murray’s dead. Shot in the head. Still, at least it was quick.’

  He gulped down beer, and pushed his face towards hers again. She knew he was going to tell her something even more horrible, but couldn’t tear her eyes from his. Like the rabbit with the stoat, he had her hypnotised.

  ‘Strang, now,’ he breathed, ‘remember him? Cornish Pastie? He was in the water, burning. I saw him, heard him screaming for his mum. I told them that, but he’s still down as missing. And you know what it all makes me want to do?’ It was a whisper mouthed directly into her face. ‘Fuck you darlin’. Fuck you so hard you fuckin’ scream like Strang. Bite your fucking tits off.’

  Rosie scrambled to her feet clutching his empty pint glass, ready to smash it on the side of the table, stick it right in his nasty mush. People were looking; the chattering voices still for a moment.

  Anderson laughed and reached out his hand towards the glass.

  ‘No need to get upset. I didn’t mean it. Come on, sit down; I’ll buy you something else if you don’t fancy the port.’ He patted the seat beside him and got up himself, talking loudly, addressing not Rosie, but the whole room.

  ‘What are you having then? How about something a bit stronger, to relax you?’

  The pub murmured its amusement. Silly girl. Getting all het up. Didn’t know how lucky she was to have such a big handsome chap, clearly doing his bit for his country and all. Her job to do her bit for him without making a song and dance about it. Red-blooded soldier like him, needed to get his leg over.

  Rosie put down the glass. ‘I’ll have half a shandy, thank you. I just need to go to the ladies first.’

  The hum of conversation resumed as she made her way across the room, carrying on straight through the public bar and out into the street. It would take him five minutes to realise she wasn’t coming back. The moon was up so she was able to see her way quite well. She didn’t stop running until she could see her uncle’s house.

  Trembling, she hung her coat on a peg in the hallway. A burst of song came from the living room. She pushed open the door and saw her uncle asleep, his head angled backwards from the stalk of a neck, his mouth hanging open. The pale flesh seemed stretched across his skull, the eye sockets hollowed out; it was a death’s head. Screaming for his mum. Anderson’s words came back. Rosie turned the radio off and her uncle stirred, closed his mouth and opened his eyes. Seeing Rosie, he leaned forward awkwardly to poke at the few coals in the grate. ‘Any news, then?’ he said, as a small flame sprang up.

  ‘Mr Tucker is on the list of captured. Mr Seymour is missing.’ The word ‘missing’ cracked in half.

  ‘They often make mistakes you know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her uncle turned at last to face her, but he did not know what to say. It had been clear she was fond of Seymour and now it seemed he was likely to be dead. He was sorry for her, but he had a dread of female tears.

  ‘Well. Now we know I don’t have to keep the rooms for them. I didn’t like to let them in case they needed somewhere when they got back.’

  The idea of someone else in Philip’s room couldn’t be borne. Rosie burst out, ‘I can’t sit here and dust while the war goes on. I’ve got to do something.’

  ‘Yes, well, I can understand perhaps you need a break. I was going to say anyway… With things fairly quiet just at the moment, if you wanted to go home…’

  ‘No. I don’t want that.’ Rosie, looked down at her silk-stockinged ankles. She couldn’t bear to go back. And she didn’t have to go back. They were managing without her all right. The front door slammed and Roger appeared in his Home Guard uniform. ‘Hello, hello,’ he said, looking pleased to find them both there. He rubbed his hands and moved towards the fire, ‘I’ve had a bit of a night.’ He waited for encouragement. ‘We went up into the woods behind Penryn.’

  The bluebell woods, Rosie thought. Our woods.

  ‘They got a chap to go and hide. He was supposed to be seriously wounded, you see, and we had to find him, give him first aid sort of style, and stretcher him back… Well! We couldn’t find him, could we? After about two hours, it was getting really dark and old Penrose said we should pack up, but then I saw this little white note pinned to a tree. You’ll never guess what it said… Bled to death and gone home.’

  It was funny. Rosie managed a laugh.

  ‘God knows how we’ll get on if the Germans invade.’ Roger grinned at them, showing his big uneven teeth.

  ‘I’m joining up,’ Rosie blurted out.

  ‘Good for you, dear. That’s the spirit. Which service?’

  She didn’t have a clue. Anything except where she would meet snooty girls like that Wren.

  ‘The Army,’ she said. ‘The ATS. I’ll go down to the recruiting office tomorrow after breakfast. I don’t know where they’ll send me.’

  ‘Southampton, I expect,’ said Roger. ‘That’s where they seem to be going at the moment.’

  It sounded far away. She didn’t want to be far away. ‘If there’s any news, Uncle…or any letters… I mean about Mr Tucker or Mr Seymour… you will send them to me or let me know, straight away, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  The two men looked helplessly at Rosie, so young and pretty and wounded in the lamplight. ‘So I’ll go to bed then. Goodnight.’

  Her uncle followed her into the hallway, stopping her on her way up the stairs. ‘If it doesn’t work out, you always have a home here. Remember that, won’t you?’

  ‘I will. And I’ll give everything a really good clean before I go.’ She came down and stood on the first step, so that their faces were level. ‘Thanks for everything, Uncle Stan. For having me here. It’s been like a new world.’ She had never kissed him, sensing his dislike for shows of emotion, but now she covered the thin hand resting on the banister with her own.

  ‘I wanted to do something for one of our Susan’s children,’ he said. ‘We were very close, you know, when we were kids, and I felt bad not seeing her for all those years. She was pretty as a picture, our Susan. You’re very like her.’

  Rosie thought, I’m not at all like Mam, but she was touched by his kindness and kissed him goodnight on the cheek.

  ‘Don’t you go throwing yourself away on the first man you meet,’ he called after.

  ‘I won’t.’

  She couldn’t sleep, and later, when the only noise in the house was Roger’s snores, she climbed the stairs to Philip’s old room, and in the moonlight, knelt by the bed and willed him to life. She pushed his arms through oily water, lit by patches of flame; swam him to a rocky shore out of the range of the guns; found a foothold for his groping feet and heaved him out of the sea to safety. Then, covering herself with a rough blanket, she slept on his bed.

  Her dreams were confused. She was in uniform, marching, and Philip was shouting orders. She was unhappy because he’d changed so much and now looked just like her uncle. ‘You can always come back and live with me,’ he said.

  Joining the war effort proved very simple. Rosie went down to the recruiting office for an interview, peed in a pot, stood on the scales, read tiny letters off a poster on the wall and signed up for the ATS. Three weeks later, armed with a train ticket and a pack of army issue sandwiches, she was on her way to Southampton for a month’s basic training.

  PART THREE

  Memoirs of a Child Migrant, 2006

  Frankie and I were together all our lives till I was six: in Naz House, on the boat, and finally for nearly two years in Dundrum. Then he got sent to Belclare, another orphanage for boys of ten and over.

  ‘I’ve been reading
a bit about Belclare,’ I started, ‘you know, as part of my research.’ We were sitting in the overgrown garden of my bungalow in Goomalling, about to christen the barbecue Frankie’d built. He shot me a look as he tipped in the charcoal, but said nothing. ‘I read the boys got picked for showing an interest in building.’

  Frankie snorted. ‘Capacity for slave labour, more like.’

  It’d been a stinking hot, thirty degree-er of a day and the sun was still strong; just like it had been the evening he’d left Dundrum. ‘I never forgot you leaving,’ I said. He had his back to me, huffing on the charcoal. The fact he stayed that way made it easier for me to carry on. ‘We came outside to see you off.’

  I remember shading my eyes to see Frankie, Dan and about twenty other boys lined up on the scuffed grass. ‘You were wearing a red shirt,’ I said. An old pickup truck arrived. One of the brothers shouted an order and a boy let down the tailgate. They all handed up their battered suitcases and climbed aboard. ‘You were the last on.’ Those pictures we carry around in our heads. They can make talking so difficult.

  Frankie rattled around with his tongs and spatulas and racks – all the kit he’d made me buy – then he cleared his throat and said, ‘Brother Macken made a long speech.’

  ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘About what a great privilege it was to be chosen for Belclare.’

  I took a breath. ‘What I remember is running over to the truck and Dan bending down to pat my head “cheerio” and you saying, “I’ll come back and see you, Littlun, I promise.”’

  I had to stop then. You think you’ll get through it and your voice just cracks. I was six years old again, hearing the engine start up and seeing the truck jolt forward, making some of the boys stumble but not Frankie, who stayed upright waving to me all the way down the road till he was just a red speck and then nothing but a little brown cloud of dust.

  After a bit Frankie turned round. I think I’d embarrassed him though it was hard to tell; the combined effect of the hot day and the fire had already turned his face puce. He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m back now,’ he said.

  He’d made a cracking job of the barbie. ‘Thank the Brothers,’ he spat, as we started on our chargrilled steak. ‘It’s down to them I know how to lay bricks. Also thank them for my crook foot.’ He laid his plate on the ground and unstrapped his sandal to show me the three crushed toes. ‘Dropped a stone on them while I was building the orphanage,’ he said. ‘Got told to shut my son-of-a-whore mouth and get on with it.’ He paused and cracked open another beer, his face dark with hate. ‘Brother Geraighty, that was.’

  The sun finally sank and the good old Fremantle Doctor, rustling through the eucalyptus, cooled us off a bit. We downed a couple more beers as we sat looking out over the weeds. I hope he felt as happy as me.

  It’s the words we’ve lost that bring us together – the words for most people that mean love and family. The words they did their best to poison for us. Brother. Sister. Father. Mother.

  17

  Southampton, May – June 1942

  The larger of the two elderly women straightened the fox feet dangling from her fur wrap and continued to complain about the war.

  ‘My dear, I told her straight, I wasn’t going to stand any nonsense of that sort… But she’s been taking advantage since. Wanting to rush off home every five minutes, to Wales if you please, and expecting us to pay the fare, but what’s one to do, maids are so hard to get and I could never run the place on my own.’

  Her companion jiggled a plump chin in agreement.

  ‘And it’s a compromise, of course. I would never have had such a girl in my employ before all this happened.’ She rolled her eyes towards a soldier standing in the train corridor. ‘I’m sure she never washes, a high watermark, my dear.’

  The other lowered her voice and leaned forward. ‘They all want to join up, though what earthly use they think they will be, I have no idea.’

  Rosie had had enough. ‘Doing your ironing isn’t going to win the war is it? I’m joining myself now.’

  The two women looked at their fellow passenger in astonishment. Fox Fur opened her mouth, closed it again, glanced up at Aunt Dottie’s smart leather suitcase in the rack and said, ‘Doubtless, we are all entitled to our opinions on the matter.’

  A silence, very pleasant to Rosie, followed. She didn’t want to argue with the old bats, just needed a bit of hush. She had been on so few journeys and although this ‘express’ from Truro to Southampton, via Lostwithiel, Saltash and Plymouth, was stopping all over the place and for no apparent reason, she was enjoying herself. There were interesting things to see out of the window, particularly when the train drew into stations, their platforms filled with soldiers and evacuees. It became a point of honour for her to scan the faces of all the soldiers, making sure Philip was not among them, once leaving her seat to walk along the corridor so that she could see to the end of a long line of uniformed men, all loaded down with haversacks. She knew he was not dead; that he would return to her; what preoccupied her most was that he might have just arrived back, could be in the buffet on this very station.

  In fact, she hoped he was not back – yet – because in the fantasy she had constructed in her head, Philip returned to find her a changed and worthier person who had achieved something in his absence. Like Joan Leslie, who learned to plough fields to keep the farm going while Gary Cooper was off being a hero in Sergeant York… Rosie dreamed, ate her cheese sandwiches, gazed out of the window at snapshots of others’ lives, wondered what she would look like in uniform.

  The train was late, because, as the harassed guard explained, it had been obliged to give way to a number of troop transports along the way. This caused a further outburst of exasperation from Rosie’s neighbours in the carriage. They finally arrived at Southampton at eight, two hours behind schedule, and then it took ages for Rosie to get out of the station, this time held up by lines of sailors shuffling through the exit. When she finally emerged into the last gasp of daylight, there was no sign of the promised army lorry. Another girl, wearing very high heels, hobbled over to join her.

  ‘You for the ATS? That makes two of us.’ The girl introduced herself as Myrna, offered Rosie a cigarette, said only God knew how wore out she was, complained of her blinking pinching shoes and then perched on the end of her suitcase, legs crossed and started on her life story. She’d been evacuated with her mother and the rest of the brats to some mud hole ten miles from Plymouth and had joined up as soon as she could to get away from the horrors of the countryside.

  ‘After the war I’m going to live somewhere where I can hear the trams going by all day long,’ she said.

  Another girl, in a sensible suit and glasses, came down the steps. ‘My train was so terribly late.’ She stood very close to Rosie, occasionally glancing nervously at Myrna, now perched on the wall with one shoe off, inspecting the damage to her toes. ‘We should have been here at seven,’ the new girl said, several times. ‘What should we do? Perhaps they will forget to pick us up.’

  ‘Proper worry guts, ent you?’ said Myrna. ‘They’ll come.’ The lights of an army lorry approached about twenty minutes later. Despite Myrna’s objections, they had to sit in the back on the floor, and though it was uncomfortable and ruinous to Myrna’s stockings, the bumpy ride at the end of the long train journey jolted them all into a stupor of tiredness. Rosie began to think fondly of her bed in Falmouth, even of Roger’s tremendous snores coming through the wall.

  But instead of a cosy bunk or a reviving cup of tea on arrival, there were more forms to fill in and then a medical examination. Rosie followed Myrna, the worrier, and several other latecomers into a hut where they were ordered to strip to their knickers.

  ‘Hold out your hands.’ A fierce-looking woman caught hold of Rosie’s wrists, peered at the palms, the backs. ‘Open your mouth.’ Fingers pulled at her scalp, at the hair behind her ears. One poor shabby-looking girl was taken behind a screen to have her head shaved
. She rejoined them later, bald and snortily tearful, and they were finally given tea and biscuits. It was after lights out by the time Rosie, clutching her army issue knife, fork, mug, spoon and striped pyjamas, was assigned a barrack room, led to her bunk and instructed in a savage whisper as to exactly how to tuck in the blankets.

  Exhausted though she was, Rosie didn’t forget to whisper Philip her news and say her prayers before she went to sleep. I’m in the ATS. In the war. Like you.

  A blaze of electric light and the slap of slippered feet on the linoleum floor woke Rosie at 5 a.m.. A dark, yawning girl was sitting on the next bunk rummaging in her washbag. ‘What’s happening?’ asked Rosie.

  ‘Chores, I think,’ said the girl. ‘Have you got any soap? Mine’s been taken. It’s like gold here, apparently.’

  Rosie hurriedly washed, dressed and joined the other thirty or so girls waiting to be assigned duties. What a mixture they were, she thought. Some very jolly hockey sticks, with scrubbed faces and posh accents; others, like the poor shaved girl, rough as badgers’ arses.

  She found herself put in a threesome with Myrna and a big silent girl and ordered to sweep and mop the barrack room floor. Though she had to do most of the work, Rosie felt comparatively lucky. The other jobs were burning sanitary towels, scrubbing toilets, or cleaning up last night’s meal.

  At half past six, another officer appeared to instruct them how to make their beds. This involved folding the three pads, called biscuits, which formed the mattress, and placing the blankets on top in such a way that the labels were exactly aligned. Then it was breakfast, fourteen to a table and a big bucket of tea plonked at one end. For a moment they all stared silently at the bucket. ‘You dip your mug in,’ said a voice.