by Alice Jolly
Alice Jolly is a novelist and playwright. Her memoir Dead Babies and Seaside Towns won the PEN Ackerley Prize 2016. She also won the V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize awarded by the Royal Society of Literature in 2014 for one of her short stories, ‘Ray the Rottweiler’. She has written two novels previously, What the Eye Doesn’t See and If Only You Knew. She has written for the Guardian, Mail on Sunday and the Independent, and she has broadcast for Radio 4. She lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
If Only You Knew
What the Eye Doesn’t See
Dead Babies and Seaside Towns
Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile
For my son Thomas –
wishing him love and laughter
for the long journey.
Dear Reader,
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CONTENTS
By the Same Author
1 Rose – Coventry, April 1941
2 Lara – Brighton, January 2003
3 Jemmy – Brighton, January 2003
4 Mollie – Brighton, January 2003
5 Bertie – Worcester, April 1941
6 Lara – Brighton, February 2003
7 Jemmy – Brighton, February 2003
8 Lara – Brighton, February 2003
9 Rose – Coventry, March 1939
10 Jay – Istanbul, February 2003
11 Oliver – Brighton, February 2003
12 Rose – Coventry, June 1939
13 Oliver – Brighton, February 2003
14 Rose – Coventry, September 1939
15 Mollie – Brighton, February 2003
16 Oliver – Falmouth, February 1961
17 Jemmy – Brighton, February 2003
18 Lara – Brighton, February 2003
19 Rose – Coventry, November 1940
20 Jemmy – Brighton, March 2003
21 Jay – Baghdad, March 2003
22 Lara – Brighton, March 2003
23 Mollie – Brighton, March 2003
24 Lara – Sheffield, June 1975
25 Jemmy – Brighton, March 2003
26 Jay – Baghdad, March 2003
27 Lara – Brighton, March 2003
28 Rose – Coventry, April 1941
29 Oliver – Brighton, March 2003
30 Lara – Brighton, June 1984
31 Mollie – Brighton, April 2003
32 Oliver – Weston-super-Mare, May 1986
33 Mollie – Worcester, July 1953
34 Lara – Brighton, April 2003
35 Oliver – Brighton, April 2003
36 Mollie – Worcester, October 1953
37 Jay – Baghdad, April 2003
38 Mollie – Worcester, March 1954
39 Lara – Brighton, April 2003
40 Lara – Brighton, August 1982
41 Jay – Baghdad, April 2003
42 Mollie – Worcester, March 1954
43 Lara – Brighton, May 2003
44 Jay – Baghdad, May 2003
45 Mollie – London, March 1963
46 Patricia – Baghdad, May 2003
47 Jemmy – Brighton, May 2003
48 Rose – Worcester, March 1963
49 Oliver – Brighton, May 2003
50 Lara – Brighton, May 2003
51 Jemmy – Brighton, July 2001
52 Lara – Brighton, May 2003
53 Mollie – Brighton, May 2003
54 Oliver – London, September 1998
55 Lara – Brighton, May 2003
56 Jemmy – Brighton, May 2003
57 Oliver – Brighton, May 2003
58 Lara – Brighton, May 2003
Acknowledgements
Supporters
Copyright
1
BEFORE
Rose – Coventry, April 1941
The dawn must come – that’s all that Rose can be certain of now. Fumbling up the steps, pulling Mollie behind her, she sees its band of grey staining the blackness above a jagged line of roofs. She puts a hand against a wall to balance herself, heads for where the gates must be, stops when she gets there, steadies herself once more against their blistered metal. For a moment, the silence is absolute – the streets, the city, breathe out knowing that the night is ending. Rose gulps a deep breath but ash furs her throat, and she gasps, coughs, feels the sting of smoke in her eyes. She puts Mollie down and the child wobbles, clings to Rose’s leg, starts to howl. Rose bends down and buttons Mollie’s coat, then shakes her to keep her quiet.
The street is white with a frost of broken glass. Rose steps forward into the muffled light, her hand gripped around Mollie’s arm. Phantoms start to stumble from the shadows, caked in plaster dust, clinging to one another as though blind. An elderly man comes towards Rose, staggering over broken kerbstones. He has a colander on his head and his bare legs stick out from under his dressing gown. His knotted hands grip the colander and he sings – Nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be, when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.
A water main has burst and damp seeps through the soles of Rose’s shoes. She reaches down and picks Mollie up, steps out of the spreading puddles. Ahead of her, through the smoke and drizzle, a fire engine is slanted against the jagged outline of a blackened wall. Above, tangled wires dangle from a drunken telegraph post. The sound of bombs still smashes through Rose’s head, pounds in her chest, and at every imagined blast the street buckles under her feet. Voices ricochet around her. God be praised. Where? Where? No All Clear this morning. Wires blown right out the ground.
People gather around a man standing by the gutter, filling a kettle from a drain and pouring water into glass bottles and mugs. The trouble with the shrapnel is that it does jam the lawn mower. Rose’s teeth chatter against the edge of a tin cup. The water is clouded and tastes of ash and soap but she gulps half of it down, then bends to hold the cup for Mollie. All the stories are at an end. So what now? Where can we go? The questions form in her mind but she considers them without concern. The mystery is that she and Mollie are alive. Of course, the house has gone, she knows that. It was the Bostocks’ house and she’d been staying in the sitting room. At least the Bostocks had left the city and Arthur was out at Division B First Aid. But she’d left her gas mask there, h
er ration book, her last ten-shilling note. And Frank will, would have…
She turns to a woman standing close by. Shackleton Street? Is this the end of Shackleton Street? Where’s the pub? The woman turns, her eyes vacant. She wears red wool socks and pieces of cardboard are tied under the soles of her shoes. Her head shakes, she turns away.
The end of Shackleton Street? The colander man catches hold of Rose and pulls her around, as though he wants to dance. Rose keeps Mollie gripped tightly against her. The end of the road? It certainly is. Except the end ain’t even here, is it? The bloody end and not even any end. A mountainous woman appears, upholstered into a tweed coat. Taking hold of the colander man, she pushes him away. As the man steps back, his dressing gown falls open, revealing long underpants, a furrow of purple ribs. He pulls the dressing gown back around himself, bursts into tears.
The woman steers Rose and Mollie away. Rose recognises her as Mrs Bartholomew, the butcher’s wife, the woman who sold her a steak as green as grass and called her Mrs Von Mayeford. But now Mrs Bartholomew’s grip is steady on Rose’s arm. You need to get to the Rest Centre, love. At Barkers Butts school. Can you hear me, love? The Rest Centre.
I need to get to the end.
No, Mrs Bartholomew says. No, love. No. Can you hear me?
Mrs Bartholomew is pulling Rose and Mollie back towards the College. Here we are. Butt Street. Can you hear me? You know where you are now, love, don’t you? Butt Street. Just keep on going. She pushes Rose and Mollie on.
The morning is arriving now, listless and blank. From an upstairs window an elderly woman shouts at the sky, grips a singed cat. Seen the worst in November. Wasn’t it enough? On and on, not a bleeding brick standing. Outlined against the bruised sky, a school hat, a pair of field glasses and several pairs of smalls dangle from the blackened branches of a tree. A wooden mangle is hooked over a lamp post and a parachute bomb, like a vast iron coffin, is suspended between the gable ends of two houses. Small boys stand under it, leaping and throwing stones, until a warden drives them away.
A gust of wind sends flecks of ash, shreds of newspaper through the air like giant flakes of snow. Rose knows the Rest Centres will be full. And even if she can find a place they will ask for an identity card. She has Mollie’s card but lost her own months back. Perhaps she could walk to Kenilworth or Nuneaton but it’ll cost two shillings a week to get any kind of bed and people don’t want a woman with a child. From somewhere under fallen beams, a radio plays – my arm about you, that charm about you, will carry me through to heaven, I’m in heaven. The sound rises scratchily into the thick air. That was a record Frank loves – used to love.
The road ahead is blocked by a corporation bus, its front and back axles snagged in telephone wires. Men with clippers are trying to untangle the mess. Apparently they got it. They definitely did. Raucous laughter. The cathedral went months ago. Others are shovelling bricks, rubble, broken glass off the road. Five bodies lie in an orderly line outside the smoking shell of a house, wrapped neatly in white sheets. Rose turns her head as she passes. A man shouts and comes towards her. Rose recognises the face. Arthur?
Arthur’s voice is raw and his shirt and trousers are torn. His black hair is plastered down to his head, his eyes lined red. The port-wine stain which has always covered his chin burns brightly. Arthur reaches out, shifts his weight onto his bad foot and back, takes hold of Mollie, holds her close against him.
Shackleton Street? Rose says. She needs to go back there. Her last ten-shilling note was under the green baize in the knife drawer and she had dry blankets stored in a tarpaulin under the bed. She needs to go back because when Frank comes home that’s where he’ll look for her.
Rosa. My bella. Arthur’s face is close to hers and he shakes her shoulder.
Frank, Rose says. Frank.
No. No. Come on, Rosa. You remember, don’t you?
His voice has the usual lilt but the light has gone from it. She does remember.
Rose, you should go to Violet. Rose, can you hear me? Go across Greyfriars Green? You know what I’m saying. You can hear me, can’t you, Rose?
Of course, she must go to 34 Warwick Road, to Violet’s house. She’d already decided that in the shelter – so close and hot, the air dark and sticky as tar, and then the water started rising and that man’s voice singing, nearer and nearer draws the time. Yes, she must go to Violet, she’ll be safe there. Violet won’t mind. Despite everything, she’s always said that Rose can go there any time. Rose thinks of Violet’s house, at the edge of the Green, imagines Violet with her bright cynicism, her brutal practicality. She longs for that house, for tap water, a fire, a bed with sheets and blankets, an eiderdown.
I’m going to come there later, Arthur says. You go now.
Arthur kisses Mollie, hands her back to Rose, then, taking hold of Rose’s arm, pulls the two of them towards Wrighton Street.
Straight ahead here. You know the way. I’ll come.
Rose’s blood is flowing again now, her eyes are searching through the gritty air, finding her way through these streets which she knows so well but which have been picked up, tossed around, thrown down anywhere. Violet, I’m coming, wait for me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Turning into Wrighton Street, glass crackles under Rose’s feet and she smells Sunday lunch. The butcher’s shop is ablaze – flames leap up from the area where the counter used to be and smoke billows out through the door. The front window has shattered and a side of pork hangs there, roasting. Some of the other meat has been rescued and is laid out on the pavement. A pool of reddish-brown liquid spreads out at Rose’s feet. Blood, she thinks, then sees twisted metal from exploded tins of oxtail soup.
The houses on the corner of Smith Street have gone but that happened months ago. Weeds grow now in the outlines of rooms and along the shattered garden paths. Boards hang and pipes are buckled. Once Rose would have stared in shock but now she doesn’t see. The bell of a fire engine rattles, a wall collapses with a sigh. A shopkeeper is trying to boil a kettle on an unexploded incendiary bomb.
Rose comes to the edge of Greyfriars Green, sets Mollie down. From here it used to be possible to see the three spires of Coventry, and the gables of the timbered houses in the centre, but all that’s gone now. Ahead is a wall of black smoke and above a crimson sky. As bad as November. Rose sets out across the Green, picking her way around the craters which have punctured the grass. Incendiary bombs still burn like Roman candles and two wardens work with shovels, scooping them up and dropping them into a bucket of water. Sweat is running down Rose’s face and so she puts Mollie down, pulls off her coat and cardigan, loops them over her arm.
Now she can see Warwick Road – a white cliff of houses, every one complete, undamaged. Even the Luftwaffe know better than to bomb Violet. Rose hears Violet’s voice – You will kill yourself with all this, Rose Mayeford. Are you listening to me? You will kill yourself. The houses are three storeys with a great many chimney pots. 34 Warwick Road. Columns, long sash windows, curling iron balconies and three steps up to the front door. A house with two inside bathrooms, the house that belonged to Mr Ernest Whiteley until he gave it to his daughter Violet when she married Stanley Bunton.
Perhaps Violet was right. Die if you must but do not kill. Rose wonders now how could she possibly have thought that goodness or reason could defeat this? She and Frank had been children, silly children. Ahead of her, a stream of people stride along Warwick Road, heading out of the city. They carry struggling babies and overflowing bags, they push bicycles or prams piled with cases, baskets, sewing machines, hat boxes, stacks of bedding, boxes of tinned food. A canary in a cage topples on a hand cart and a group of children carry a rolled-up carpet. Toddlers are piled into wheelbarrows. A fat woman has collapsed at the side of the road and an infant clings to her leg. Most of the people walk in silence but, as Rose approaches, a few of them shout at her to go back. Rose stops for a moment to push sweat-soaked hair back off her face but then heads on, gripping Mollie against he
r, pushing her way through the crowds.
34 Warwick Road. Ernest Whiteley’s house, except he isn’t here any more. Lost his mind, they say, can’t tell the difference between his own daughter and a parrot cage. Rose is unsteady as she opens the gate. The path is zigzagged tiles of red and black brick, and stone lions stand either side of the door. How ridiculous that the lions are still standing up straight and proud. Even now Rose feels as though she must tidy her hair, straighten her cuffs. She rings the doorbell but no one answers. Mollie has settled against Rose’s shoulder now, her hands locked over her eyes.
Violet will be out in the Anderson at the back. That shelter was one of the first to be built in the city. The wrought-iron arch – which once rose to a Moorish point, decorated by a pineapple-like knob – and the wisteria were pulled out to make room for it. Arthur and Frank had teased Violet. Don’t be daft. A shelter? There’s seven lines of defence before they reach Coventry.
Rose turns the door handle, steps into the hall, measures the dimensions of this undamaged house, breathes in the shuttered air. A picture has dropped from a wall and lies face down on the floor. Plaster dust is sprinkled across the hall table and peppers the black and white floor tiles but the stuffed eagle is still chained to its perch inside the glass dome and palms still sprout from willow-pattern vases, resting on curvaceous wooden stands. China figurines – shepherdesses and milkmaids – stand unmoved in the glass cabinet beside the fireplace. The stairs sweep down, wide and curving, with their faded green carpet and brass stair rods. The mahogany rail curls itself into a snail shell above the last step and the bevelled glass mirror – spotted and chipped – still reflects the spangled light from the chandelier.
And the giant Chinese vases—
Rose’s mind slides backwards. The Chinese vases, the umbrella, that first evening. Two years ago, a half-remembered fairy tale, a Christmas party in the house of Mr Whiteley, the Head of the Accounts Department. Rose had only just arrived in Coventry, had only been working at the factory for three months, had already earned the nickname Red Rose but was still invited along with everyone else. Back home in Lincolnshire, you wouldn’t have gone in such a house unless you were in service but Rose had stepped up smartly to the front door, tight on gin, in her silk stockings and her one good pair of shoes, bought in the sale at Owen Owen the Saturday before. The lines of the chessboard floor tiles wavered, vague in the candlelight. The walls glittered with ornaments – silver platters and cigar boxes on glass shelves, candlesticks and salt cellars, photographs in jewelled frames.