‘Do you ever look at anyone else and think, “he’s dishy”?’
‘No,’ said Rosie, wriggling a little under her blankets.
‘The instructors here are the absolute dregs, aren’t they? All the handsome ones must have been sent overseas, worse luck.’
‘Just as well you’ve got Alvin…’ Rosie knew Stella wanted to be teased. Alvin was an American they’d met at a dance.
‘Oh, Alvin!’ Stella giggled.
Rosie’s hand found a gap between the buttons of her pyjamas, slid over a breast. She seemed to have got bigger, lately. ‘My beautiful Romany princess,’ he’d said. Under the flannelette her stomach felt quite…swollen. She pushed the thought down. The army fed you so well, four meals a day, and she’d eaten loads of bread and jam at tea. Spam fritters for supper. She didn’t want to run to fat like Aunt Betty.
‘What’s it like, Ro?’ Stella stared across at Rosie. ‘A really good necking session?’
‘I can’t describe it.’
‘Do try.’
But a sudden shaft of light from the doorway and a mild commotion as Janet and Celia returned to their beds, distracted Stella. Rosie started on her prayers. Pauline’s bunk remained empty. No one mentioned her name after that night.
Their six weeks in Guildford flew by. With ten days to go, news came through of their posting, and while the other girls were at lunch, Rosie found a quiet room to write to her uncle and let him know where she was going. Though he was not a good correspondent, she sent him two letters a week, keeping her fingers crossed he would inform her immediately if there was word of Philip.
I asked the officer taking our weekly current affairs discussion, and was pleased to hear Falmouth has not been hit by any bombs lately. You should see what’s going on in London! Every night, us girls look out from the barracks and see the sky light up in the distance. It makes you long to have a go back at them and I can’t wait to get to Wimbledon Common, where we just learned we are going at the end of next week (well, twenty of us) to start our REAL duties. Apparently, there is a HUGE anti-aircraft gun there, the biggest in Britain!
I am still doing quite well in my studies, and came third in a test on aircraft recognition, which made me very happy when I got the results today.
I was wondering if the next time we have leave, I could bring Stella to Falmouth? That will be on the 15th August. She has been very good to me, and I went to her home in Woking for my last leave. Do you remember I told you about her in one of my earlier letters? I am sure you would like her.
How many Americans do you have staying now? I hope you are managing and the new girl is working hard. Anyway, Uncle, I hope this letter finds you well and look forward to hearing from you soon. I am sorry to be a nuisance, but please do let me know at once if you hear any news of Private Seymour.
With love from Rosie
P.S. Please send my best regards to Roger.
On the jolting ride to Wimbledon, Rosie felt how lucky she was to be coming closer and closer to the heart of things; from Falmouth to Southampton, to Guildford and now to London. Some girls got sent to quiet places where it was hard to remember a war was going on, but she would be on the edge of the capital itself, where you could see, hear, and even – she sniffed at the air coming through the canvas flaps of the lorry – smell the great battle.
Stella was deep in the American film magazine Alvin had given her, Vera dozed, others grumbled and chatted. No one else seemed to be experiencing the sense of excitement that almost completely filled Rosie’s consciousness, leaving only just room for her to feel glad of the draughts penetrating the interior of the lorry, enabling her to keep her jacket on without discomfort.
But the niggling distraction began to demand more of her attention. Rosie loved the huge gun, loved learning how to fix its sights, irritated Stella by her enthusiasm for everything on the site, but after a further two weeks had gone by, started to find it difficult to visualise her future in the Army. Without acknowledging to herself exactly why, she went to the washrooms either very early or very late. A conversation she’d once had with Myrna about hot baths, gin, or at the last resort, a crochet hook, kept running through her head. She hurt Stella’s feelings by refusing to be Alvin and practise the slow foxtrot with her, and instead of taking her down to Falmouth as she’d promised for the August leave, she invented a decrepit aunt she must visit. While Stella went to Vera’s house in Norwich, Rosie took a train back to Guildford and booked into a cheap bed and breakfast, where she drank a whole bottle of gin and outraged the landlady by using up all the hot water.
One afternoon soon afterwards, Rosie fainted on the parade ground. The officer was sympathetic. Had she eaten anything that could have disagreed with her? Was she normally susceptible to heat? Why did she not have a lie-down for a couple of hours? ‘I’ll give you a permission slip.’ But rather than going back to the barrack room, Rosie used it to persuade the soldier at the gate to let her out of the camp until 5 p.m..
Beyond the gun site, the edge of the city quickly gave way to fields. Rosie climbed over a stile and found herself among a browsing herd of cattle. They raised their heads, looked at her, their breathy curiosity louder than the drone of a tractor in the next field, the swish of blades on corn. She made her way along the edge of the meadow, the grass tickling her ankles, followed by a venturesome black cow. She turned and the cow skittered away, stopped, blinked, stretched its wet nose towards her once more.
‘Silly thing,’ Rosie cooed to it. ‘Soft chej.’
Behind her lay the sprawl of London, a city, so far as Rosie was concerned, still completely unexplored. In the other direction, houses and spires patched the landscape; beyond them a sea of green. ‘Come, and soon there will be no one but you and a green path into the hills,’ the old voice called. Oh to walk and walk and walk, never have to face the shaming, the rejection. She took off her jacket, loosened her waistband of her skirt, felt herself spread, swell, like dough in a warm place.
Beyond the gate, on the other side of a sandy-coloured lane, a gypsy caravan was parked, a piebald horse, free of the shafts, tethered to graze. Rosie felt she must be dreaming, but the woman wearing a red headscarf over her black hair looked real enough, sitting on the steps of the caravan, eating a raw carrot. She took the carrot out of her mouth and waved Rosie over, inviting her, with hand gestures, to view the inside of her caravan. ‘Come, come,’ she called.
Rosie thought, ‘She doesn’t see me for what I am. She thinks I’ll give her money,’ but the strange pulls of the day were not to be questioned. Up the steps she went. The caravan’s interior, glowing with polished metal, coloured fabrics and bright china, was exactly like a miniature version of Aunt Betty’s parlour.
‘Cushti,’ said Rosie.
The woman’s dark eyes widened. She spoke quickly, a torrent of words.
‘I only speak a little,’ Rosie admitted.
‘You are one of us,’ the woman said.
‘Yes. My father. But my mother gadgie.’
The woman nodded. She beckoned Rosie further in, and pulling aside a yellow curtain at the back of the caravan, revealed a wooden cradle, and in it, a sleeping brown baby. Though fast asleep, the child’s mouth moved, its lips pursing rhythmically, forming little sucking Os. Rosie leaned in, scented the baby’s sweet, milky exhalations, and felt a flutter in her womb. Like a bird trapped inside; her own child; Philip’s child.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.
The woman’s face looked troubled.
‘You have a husband?’
‘No.’
The woman shook her head, but kindly. Yes, thought Rosie, I can’t walk into the hills, find a caravan. There isn’t any escape. But for a while, she took refuge there, accepted a cup of something hot and sweet, laid her head on a bright patchwork cushion, and slept.
When she woke there were voices outside. It was Da, she thought, confused, Da arguing about money with one of his sisters. Then she remembered where she was. As she came down
the steps two faces turned to look and Rosie realised they had been talking about her. Perhaps the woman wanted to help in some way, but the husband’s face was closed. Like Da’s would be, if he knew.
Slowly, weighted, she walked back. It was late, nearly dark; they would be looking for her. The camp fence, crowned with its coils of barbed wire, appeared to one side, then the line of white huts, ghostly in the light. She could bear it; there had been worse times; it had to be endured, that was all. Changing step on the march! Cha-ange step! The life she loved. There was burning behind her eyes, but she would not cry. He’d come back. He would come back.
The chatty soldier on the gate noticed nothing different about her when she came back. He was ready to tear her off a strip on account of her lateness, but you could have knocked him down with a feather when she parked herself down and announced, ‘I’m pregnant.’ Just spilled it out like that, then asked him, as if he should know, ‘Who have I got to see?’
Memoirs of a Child Migrant, 2006
I didn’t cotton to who it was on the line at first, and meanwhile she was going on about how important it was for people to know the truth, so as such a terrible, terrible situation could never happen again. ‘What’s the first thing you can remember, to start us off?’
‘I don’t want to share my memories with the press, thanks.’
‘Did I forget to mention we’re prepared to pay? We’re known as a very generous newspaper.’
I put the receiver down.
My ex-wife Jan qualified as a social worker later in life than most. Once she started the training, she had the explanation she’d been looking for all our years together. You see, they reckon the first years in life are hugely formative. ‘It’s behind everything, Al,’ she said. ‘Why you are what you are. They took away your mother and you never got over it.’
According to Jan, I was impossible to live with because my disturbed childhood made me demand more or less constant reassurance from my partner. ‘It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, Al,’ she said when she left. ‘For years you told me I didn’t love you, and finally you got proved right.’
After the call from the journalist I sat in the big window of the bungalow, finishing off the beer while I watched the sun drop into red earth. Then I began to write it down. Made me feel better. Almost phoned Jan to tell her, because she’s a great advocate of personal writing as therapy, except by then it was two in the morning, and I didn’t want to get the man’s voice on the other end.
I’m in a long place, very shiny, a corridor probably, but huge, endless, and a voice is calling. I think it’s my mother’s voice and I crawl along the slippery floor towards it, while the voice grows fainter and fainter.
More like a dream than a memory, isn’t it? I remember my mother pushing me on a swing, but it’s just the swish of her dress and her voice. No face. I remember the toothy nun telling us about Australia and being excited. I don’t remember anything about the train we went on before the boat, but as the ex-wife always says, ‘You carry the past with you, even if you don’t think you know it.’
It wasn’t till the late 1960s, when Jan and I travelled to England on a sort of late honeymoon, that I realised something terrible must have happened to me on a train.
19
London, September – December 1942
The doctor was not judgemental, more amazed that the pregnancy had gone undetected for so long. He asked Rosie questions about dates, examined her and remarked in wonder to his assistant that the ATS Service Jacket was about ‘the best bloody maternity garment ever invented.’
‘I believe you to be six months’ pregnant,’ he said, looking past her out of the window. ‘You appear to be in excellent health.’ The grey-haired subaltern Rosie saw next frowned, pursed her lips, and, in informing Rosie she was to be discharged from the Army under Paragraph 11, implied she had single-handedly lost Britain the war. The Junior Commander was simply matter-of-fact. ‘The Army has a duty to you, Mullen, to ensure your welfare and the welfare of your child. Where do you intend to go?’
‘To my uncle’s, in Falmouth.’
‘Is he aware of your condition?’
‘Not yet. I’ll write to him.’
‘You’re a Roman Catholic, I believe?’
‘Yes.’
‘What I intend to do is contact a Catholic facility suitable for you. You’ll be discharged to this facility. However, if you are subsequently able to make your own arrangements, you will be able to leave, subject to the agreement of those in authority, and notification to us. Is that understood?’
‘Yes.’
‘This precaution is for your benefit. It may be, in future, after the birth, that the Army will be able to help you in some way.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘In the meantime, because your revelation has come rather late in the day, I’d like you to return to your barracks as though nothing has happened.’
But the second revelation, that of the soldier at the gate, had done its work. Rosie walked the length of the barrack room to turned backs and a silence only interrupted by someone murmuring ‘mentality of a cow’ as she passed. Stella’s bunk was empty, the biscuits neatly aligned, the bedside table bare. She’d moved to Pauline’s old bunk. Only Vera spoke, crossing the room especially to inform Rosie how ‘terribly upset and let down’ Stella was, asking if the words ‘self-control’ meant anything to her at all? Rosie curled up on her bed and closed her eyes.
In the night, she woke in the half dark to find Stella beside her, in tears. ‘Vera says you’re a gypsy. Are you, Rosie?
‘Half a one.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘That I was Romany?’
‘No, not that. You should have told me.’
‘Perhaps I should.’
Stella sniffed. ‘It’s the dishonesty I can’t forgive. That’s what’s upset me so much.’ She walked away.
After that awful night, Rosie found the scurrying anonymity of central London a warm embrace. People intent on their own business hardly glanced in her direction and the city opened up its maze of streets and bomb-damaged buildings in smoky welcome. Rosie dawdled as long as she could, exploring the famous names: Piccadilly, Hyde Park Corner and Oxford Street, before taking a bus to Camberwell and following the directions she’d been given. But even after she had found the place, its Catholic identity familiar from its stained brick contours, she lingered on the street until the boy on the corner had sold the last of his evening newspapers. Then she stepped up to the heavy wooden door and rang the bell.
A young, unsmiling nun let her in and Rosie stepped from London’s lovely indifference into the disapproving world of the Little Sisters of the Poor. She followed the nun along a tiled corridor, smelling of disinfectant, to a high-ceilinged room where a group of about forty bloated women sat at a long wooden table.
‘Girls,’ the nun announced to the women, many of whom looked middle-aged, ‘this is Rosemary Mullen.’ Rosie sat down on the bench. Bread, jam and margarine were on the table. An older, dumpy nun appeared, carrying a huge brown teapot.
A girl with eyes set very far apart lunged across the cloth, seized the one pot of jam and scooped a red handful of it into her mouth. The young nun pulled the jar away and slapped the girl’s face hard, once on each cheek. ‘Happens every teatime,’ whispered the woman sitting next to Rosie, as the poor stupid girl set up a bawling howl, mouth wide open and scarlet with jam. ‘She never fucking learns. Here, have some bread – wouldn’t bother with the jam if I was you. My name’s Beryl by the way. You’re not very big, are you? When are you due?’
Beryl, at twenty, was older than Rosie, and certainly wiser when it came to how to survive at Nazareth House. The place was filled to bursting with women of all kinds, from adulterous mothers hiding from their families, to well-bred convent girls, to gawping sillies who did not know where they were or why. The youngest mother-to-be was thirteen; the oldest, a grey-haired woman, whose legs bulged with blue varicose ve
ins, forty-eight. She cried all the time, and all the time the nuns screamed at her to stop.
Every day or so, one of the inmates went into labour and disappeared down a shining corridor lined with statues of the saints to the mysterious ‘other side’, never to be seen again, another pregnant woman arriving shortly afterwards to occupy the vacant position.
The other side, Beryl informed Rosie, was where you lived with the baby until it was adopted. ‘I can’t wait to have it and get rid of it,’ she said. ‘Get away from these bloody bad-tempered virgins.’ Beryl’s husband was fighting in Africa, the baby the result of a romance with an air raid warden. ‘Only just got to like it when Bob got posted. Didn’t want to do without it, that was my problem. Mum’s told everyone I’ve got a touch of TB. With any luck Bob’ll never know. Shame you ain’t staying to have yours here. You’re about the only one I can talk to.’
It was just as well all Beryl needed was a friendly ear, because Rosie could not bring herself to discuss her own situation. And the idea that she wasn’t stuck at Naz House, that she would soon be flying off to a better perch, was the only thing keeping her going. But it was three weeks before Rosie screwed up the courage to write to her uncle and ask if she could come back. In the meantime, her life filled once again with chores, her ability with buckets, mops and the abolition of dirt in general, keeping her from the worst of the nuns’ scolding. Despite the frequent air raids, Rosie felt herself moving further and further away from the war. She lost her appetite for news of the world, her interests focusing more on babies’ names, wool, cottons, the things she needed when, in the evenings, she sewed and knitted for her child.
Her letter arrived in Falmouth on 27th September. On 28th September, in one of the last of the so-called ‘Baedeker’ raids on English towns, a German plane Rosie would have recognised as a Dornier 217 from its two underslung radial engines and its bullet-shaped head, dropped its load of incendiary bombs, and, spiralling out of control, took the roof off a house in Falmouth. Uncle Stan and Roger, who had moved to the two attic rooms because the Yanks had insisted on more spacious accommodation, were incinerated in their beds. When Rosie wrote again in early November, a kindly postman scrawled, ‘Return to sender. House bombed. Occupants killed. Sorry,’ and posted the envelope back.
The War Before Mine Page 16