by Annie Groves
‘They’ve had a hit in Bessie Street so them from there have had to come in here,’ one of their neighbours informed Rosie as she looked in dismay at the already crowded interior of the shelter. Unfamiliar faces stared back at her, illuminated by the thin blue light from the special-issue lanterns that was all they were allowed inside the shelters. A young woman was trying to quieten her crying children, whilst an old man was complaining that he had come out without his teeth.
Christine had followed Rosie into the shelter and somehow they managed to find a space where they could sit down.
‘I hate these ruddy shelters,’ her mother complained. ‘They stink to high heaven, and I swear summat bit me the last time we was down here.’
A small child screamed as more incendiary bombs exploded somewhere close at hand, whilst a neighbour who was known to be the street’s worst gossip, seated opposite Rosie, announced, ‘I saw young Rob Whittaker calling round at your house this tea time, Rosie, just before your ma got home.’
Rosie could feel her face growing hot but she ignored the insinuation and answered pleasantly, ‘Yes. He was calling to let me know that Dad’s ship wasn’t one of those in that convoy that was torpedoed.’
‘A good lad young Rob is,’ Mr Walton, the ARP warden, who had overheard, nodded approvingly. ‘Very thoughtful and conscientious.’
‘Yes, it was kind of him to come and tell me,’ Rosie agreed.
‘So what’s this, then?’ her mother demanded, giving her a nudge in the ribs.
‘It’s nothing,’ Rosie answered her curtly. She didn’t want to discuss Rob with her mother. She didn’t want her barbed comments sullying their conversation.
‘What are you up to?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Nothing as bad as you,’ Rosie hissed.
‘Shush! Mind you remember what you promised me, Rosie, and no telling your dad about me and Dennis,’ Christine said under her breath. ‘It’s bad enough with gossips like her around,’ she continued, nodding in the direction of the busybody sitting near them.
‘You promised me you wouldn’t see him again,’ Rosie hissed back angrily.
‘I wasn’t going to, but he was that upset. See, Dennis’s got feelings, not like your dad.’
‘Mum, you mustn’t do this,’ Rosie urged. ‘Please don’t. Please don’t see him any more. It’s wrong and…it’s shameful…and – and someone’s bound to find out.’
The all clear sounded, making it impossible for them to say any more.
‘Bloody Hitler, I’m sick of him getting me out of me bed night after night,’ one woman was complaining as they all started to make their way up the steps into the damp night air.
‘Aye, well, you’d be a hell of a lot sicker if you was bombed in your bed,’ someone else replied grimly.
The smell of smoke, burning wood, soot and old buildings hung heavily on the air. Gerard Street and the streets around it smelled so very different now from how they had done when Rosie was growing up. Those happy days seemed so far away. Her eyes smarted with tears as she remembered the rich aroma of freshly made coffee and the wonderful smells in the local Italian grocer’s, with its delicious salamis and cheeses, and its freshly made pasta, and fat juicy tomatoes. In those days, or so it seemed to her looking back, every door in the street had always been welcomingly open so that the air of the street itself had been warmed by the smell of Italian cooking. Just thinking about Maria’s special basil-flavoured pasta sauce made Rosie’s mouth water.
Maria! Did she and Bella ever think about her and wish, as she did, that things might have been different? Or was their mourning for those they had lost still so intense that they had no thoughts or emotions to spare for her?
Swallowing hard against her pain, Rosie looked towards the docks. As much as she longed for her father’s return she was also now dreading it. There was no way her mother could keep this secret for long and it would kill Rosie to try to act normally in front of her father. No good could come from any of this. For the first time ever, Rosie wished that her father wasn’t taking shore leave.
ELEVEN
‘And Lance was telling me that he could get me anything I want, and that a girl my age shouldn’t have to ask her parents’ permission to go out on a date, and—’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sylvia, if Lance told you the moon was made of blue cheese would you believe that as well?’ Rosie snapped.
‘There’s no call for you to go being like that,’ Sylvia complained, looking hurt. ‘I was only saying…’
‘Have you told your parents that you’re seeing him yet?’ Rosie demanded.
Sylvia gave her a sullen look. ‘I would have told them but my dad’s got this bee in his bonnet about me goin’ out wi’ lads. He says I’m too young.’
The workroom buzzer went and Enid called out, ‘Rosie, shop – it’s your turn.’
It was a pity that Sylvia had ever had to meet Lance, Rosie decided, protective of her friend as she hurried into the shop, and then came to an abrupt halt as Lance himself turned away from the display he had been studying and smiled sneeringly at her.
‘Well, well, if it isn’t Miss Stuck Up.’
Rosie cast an anxious look over her shoulder to the small office where she knew Mrs Verey would be. One of the rules she made plain to her staff when she took them on was that they were not allowed to have friends or family call on them whilst they were at work. Sylvia was so besotted with Lance that she had probably forgotten to warn him about this, Rosie decided.
‘If you’ve come to see Sylvia—’ she hissed, but Lance shook his head.
‘Did I say that? As it happens I’ve come in to buy a bit of summat for someone special. You know the kind of thing I mean, don’t you, Rosie? Something in silk with lots of lace…’
Rosie swallowed. There was something not just about the way he was looking at her, but also in the way he was speaking that was making her feel very uncomfortable. Now instead of dreading her employer coming into the shop, she almost wished that she would.
‘Our stock is rather limited at the moment,’ she began formally. That much was true but they did have the kind of things he was referring to and Rosie knew that Mrs Verey wouldn’t be pleased if she turned away a sale for something so expensive. ‘But of course I will show you what we have. If it’s for Sylvia…’ she began uncertainly.
‘That’s for me to know, isn’t it?’ he answered with an unpleasant leer.
‘Do you know the size of the lady in question?’ Her pride wouldn’t let her show him just how much she hated asking him that question and seeing the way he smirked at her in response.
‘Well, let me see…’ The way he was looking at her made Rosie’s face burn. He was embarrassing her deliberately and enjoying doing so, she was sure.
‘Well, she’s about your size, I expect, so if you show me what you’ve got and hold it up against you then I’ll be able to imagine how it’s going to look on her, won’t I?’
Rosie was glad that she had ducked down beneath the counter to slide out one of the wooden drawers. Her hands were trembling as she carefully removed a pair of delicate cream silk, lace-trimmed French knickers.
‘We have these,’ she told Lance, making sure she avoided looking directly at him as she placed the knickers on the glass countertop.
‘Well, now, I reckon I was thinking of summat a bit more saucy than that, Rosie. You know, a bit more cut away. The kind of thing a lad would like to see his girl almost wearing.’ He was smirking at her again.
She hadn’t liked him right from the first and now she liked him even less.
‘I’m sorry but these are the only style we have in,’ she told him truthfully.
‘I suppose the brassiere is just as old-fashioned, is it? Go on then, I might as well have it, seeing as it’s all you’ve got. Let’s have a look at it.’
Still refusing to let him see how much she was hating serving him, Rosie dutifully unfolded a matching brassiere in a size she knew would fit Sylvia.
Rosie couldn’t believe her ears. How could he ask her out like that, as cool as you please, when he was already seeing Sylvia? Even if she had liked him – which she most certainly did not – the fact that he was seeing her friend would have meant that she would refuse him in a heartbeat.
‘No thank you,’ she told him shortly. ‘I don’t go out with men who are seeing other girls.’
‘Please yourself, it’s your loss. And I was wrong about you ’cos a really smart girl would have known when she was in luck.’
She could see that she had annoyed him, but she didn’t care, Rosie told herself. Ten minutes later, when he finally left the shop carrying the knickers and brassiere set he had bought, Rosie was shaking inwardly. How could Sylvia be silly enough to like him? He was arrogant and loathsome. It was almost as though he had wanted her to think he was buying the underwear for someone else and not Sylvia.
‘Do you fancy going to the pictures with me after work tonight?’ Sylvia asked her when she got back to the workroom.
‘I can’t. Dad’s ship’s docked and he’ll be coming home.’
Rosie knew she didn’t need to make any further explanations. Home leave was so precious that everyone knew and understood that families wanted to spend every minute of it together. Or at least most families did. Her face clouded at the thought of what the evening ahead had in store.
Rosie shivered in the cold wind whipping up Bold Street as she stepped out of the shop. They were almost into November and although only half-past six it was already pitch-black. Several stars shone, throwing out just enough light for her to recognise the man standing waiting for her.
‘Dad!’
Rosie threw herself into her father’s arms with a small cry of delight. He hugged her close and it was all she could do to stop herself crying.
‘I wasn’t expecting you to come and meet me from work,’ she told him as she tucked her arm through his.
‘Well, your mam said that she had to go out to do someone’s hair so I thought I might as well come into town and walk back with you as be in on me own.’
Rosie stiffened. Was her mother genuinely out working or had she broken her promise and gone out with her married lover? Even Christine couldn’t be so cruel, could she?
‘Did she tell you that she’s changing her shift to work nights?’ she asked her father hesitantly, half afraid to enquire what had been said between them.
‘Aye, and she said as how she wants to find somewhere to rent further away from the docks on account of all the bombing. I must say it would be a load off my mind, knowing that the two of you were living somewhere safer.’
Rosie bit her lip. The truth lurked dangerously on her lips. She hated being deceitful but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth about her mother. She just couldn’t bear to hurt him like that. All she could hope for was that her mother would come to her senses.
‘I’m so glad you’re home,’ she told him instead, squeezing his arm lovingly. ‘We had news the other day about one of the convoys being torpedoed. I was so worried about you until Rob Whittaker told me that your ship was safe.’
‘Rob Whittaker? And who might he be then?’ Her father was trying to sound as though he was joking but Rosie could hear the sharp note of fatherly concern in his voice.
‘He’s a fireman, lodging with the Norrises. He’s working down near the docks. You’ll like him, Dad. His brother’s in the merchant navy.’
‘Oh, I will, will I? Well, we’ll have to see about that. Any lad who comes round courting my daughter—’
‘Dad, it isn’t like that,’ Rosie protested indignantly, her face on fire. ‘Don’t you go letting him think that I’ve told you that it is. How much leave have you got?’ she asked, swiftly changing the subject.
‘Only forty-eight hours, lass, and then we won’t be back again until Christmas.’
Rosie’s excitement faded. Christmas was weeks away.
‘But I haven’t forgotten that a certain someone will be having a birthday soon,’ her father teased. ‘I’ve got a bit of summat in my kitbag for you, Rosie. Brought specially all the way from New York. A few pairs of stockings and some perfume and a couple of lengths of fabric for you and your mum to make yourself a new dress apiece. And mind, no trying to get me to let you unwrap them until your birthday! I’ll be at sea then, but I’ll be thinking about my girl opening her presents and thinking of her old dad.’
‘Oh, Dad…’ Rosie said emotionally. ‘You shouldn’t have. It isn’t presents I want. It’s having you safe.’ She hugged him fiercely again, burying her face in the warmth of his reefer jacket.
‘Aye, I know that, Rosie lass. You’re the best daughter a man could have, and when I saw all the pretty girls in New York I thought to myself that none of them was half so pretty as you.
‘Have you managed to call round and see your Auntie Maude whilst I’ve been away, Rosie?’
Rosie shook her head guiltily. ‘I will try, Dad,’ she promised, ‘but what with fire-watch duty, and all the other things we have to do, there just doesn’t seem to be time.’
‘I can’t get over how much it’s changed round here,’ her father commented as they walked past the closed shops that had once been so busy.
‘It is different without all the Italian families,’ Rosie agreed sadly. ‘That was so awful what happened to them, Dad.’
‘Bad things happen during wartime, Rosie.’
Rosie felt shamed, knowing that her father must have seen such horrors himself. She determined there and then that she would make his leave, no matter how short, as pleasurable as possible. She just hoped that her mother would come to her senses and realise how lucky she was to be married to a man like her father.
TWELVE
‘So where’s Sylvia this morning? She’s going to be in trouble with Mrs Verey for being late. She’s not still seeing that cousin of Nancy’s, is she, Rosie?’ Enid asked Rosie as they all huddled round the single-bar electric fire in the workroom, trying to warm the damp November chill out of their cold hands prior to starting work.
Rosie hesitated before answering. The truth was that she and Sylvia were no longer friends – Sylvia’s decision, not hers – but she was as reluctant to say so as she was to explain why. Not because she felt she was at fault – she didn’t unless it was for forgetting just how young Sylvia was – but because she still felt a sense of loyalty towards Sylvia, and a need to protect her.
‘She is still seeing him, yes,’ she acknowledged reluctantly when it was plain that she was going to have to give some kind of answer.
The quarrel that had brought about the end of their friendship had happened earlier in the month, when Rosie had stuck firmly by her decision not to give in to Sylvia’s pleas that she make up a foursome with her and Lance and one of his friends.
‘Aw, go on, Rosie,’ Sylvia had urged her. ‘Lance will get his mate to get you some stockings.’
‘No, thanks,’ Rosie had refused firmly. ‘Dad’s told me that he’s brought me stockings back as a birthday present and, to be honest, Sylvia, I’d rather not have things that I know others are having to do without. It doesn’t seem fair somehow.’
She hadn’t wanted to seem to be critical of Sylvia or to offend her but Rosie had seen from the defiant toss of Sylvia’s head that her frankness hadn’t been well received. But there had been worse to come.
‘Huh, as for that, you can’t tell me that a few cans of this and that haven’t made their way into your larder from the docks, just like they�
�ve done into ours.’
‘No, I can’t,’ Rosie had been forced to admit. She certainly suspected that her mother was obtaining her cigarettes from the black market, even though Christine had never come out and said so.
‘So what’s the difference between that and having a boyfriend like Lance who knows what’s what?’ Sylvia had demanded.
In truth there wasn’t any logical difference that Rosie could explain, other than that somehow she knew it would make her feel uncomfortable to be accepting the largesse of a man like Lance.
In the end she had felt obliged to say quietly, ‘Sylvia, I don’t mean to interfere, but I think I should warn you that Lance—’
To Rosie’s horror Sylvia had stopped her immediately to say scornfully, ‘Oh ho, so that’s how you’re going to do it, is it? Lance warned me as how you’d bin trying to mek up to him so as you could steal him away from me. But me thinking you was my friend, I told him that he must have got it wrong. But it was me that got it wrong, wasn’t it, Rosie, ’cos it’s as plain as the nose on me face what you’re up to. You’re trying to put me off Lance, so as you can have him. Well, it won’t work. And as for us being friends – you’re no friend of mine and I don’t want nothing to do with you no more.’
Rosie could only stare at her in shocked disbelief. Surely Sylvia couldn’t be serious? Rosie had made her own feelings about Lance abundantly plain. It was laughable that anyone should think she was so much as able to tolerate him, never mind anything else.
When she had got over her astonishment she shook her head and told Sylvia gently, ‘Look, Sylvia, I can see that you might not like me being so frank about not thinking that Lance is right for you, but I’ve only said what I’ve said for your own good.’
‘For your own good, more like,’ Sylvia came back at her quick as a flash. ‘There’s no point in you trying to soft-soap me, Rosie, not now that Lance has told me what you’ve bin up to.’