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John peered out of the window, then, frowning, he opened the back door and stepped out, head tipped up as he sauntered along the garden path. His mouth suddenly fell agape in a mixture of shock and fear and he pelted back towards the house, shouting.
But the sirens had belatedly begun to wail, cutting off his warning of an air raid.
Rosie let the crockery crash back to the draining board on hearing the eerie sound and sprang to the back door to hurry her father inside. Before John could reach the house a short whistle preceded an explosion in a neighbour’s garden, sending him to the ground, crucified on the concrete at the side of the privy.
Crouching on the threshold, arms covering her head in instinctive protection, Rosie could hear her father groaning just yards away. She’d begun to unfold to rush to him when debilitating terror hit her. She sank back, shaking and whimpering, biting down ferociously on her lower lip to try to still her chattering teeth. Tasting and smelling the metallic coppery blood on her tongue increased the horrific images spinning inside her head. She rammed her fists against her eyes but she couldn’t shut out the carnage she’d witnessed in the Café de Paris a year ago. Her nostrils were again filled with the sickly stench of blood, and her mind seemed to echo with the sounds of wretched people battling for their final moments of life. Some had called in vain for loved ones … or the release of death. Limbless bodies and staring sightless eyes had been everywhere, tripping her up as she’d fled to the street, smothered in choking dust. For months afterwards she’d felt dreadfully ashamed that she’d instinctively charged to safety rather than staying to comfort some of those poor souls.
‘Rosie … can you hear me …?’
Her father’s croaking finally penetrated Rosie’s torment and she scrambled forward, uncaring of glass and wood splinters tearing into her hands and knees. She raked her eyes over him for injuries, noting his bloodied shin, although something else was nagging at her that refused to be dragged to the forefront of her mind.
‘Think me leg’s had it,’ John cried as his daughter bent over him.
Rosie was darting fearful looks at the sky in case a second attack was imminent. The bomber had disappeared from view, but another could follow at any moment and drop its lethal load. Obliquely Rosie was aware of neighbours shouting hysterically in the street as they ran for the shelters, but she had to focus on her father and how she could get him to safety in their cellar.
‘Take my arm, Dad … you must!’ she cried as he tried to curl into a protective ball on hearing another engine. Thank goodness this aeroplane, now overhead, was a British Spitfire on the tail of the Dornier. ‘Come on … we can make it … one of ours is after that damned Kraut.’ Rosie felt boosted by the fighter avenging them and murmured a little prayer for the pilot’s safety as well as their own. But then her attention was fully occupied in getting her father to cooperate in standing up. He was slowly conquering his fear and squirming to a seated position with her assistance.
Regaining her strength, she half-lifted him, her arm and leg muscles in agony and feeling as though they were tearing from their anchoring bones. Gritting her teeth, she managed to get both herself and her father upright. With her arm about his waist she dragged him, limping, into the kitchen. John Gardiner wasn’t a big man; he was short and wiry but heavy for a girl weighing under eight stone to manhandle.
Slowly and awkwardly they descended the stairs to the cellar, crashing onto the musky floor two steps from the bottom when Rosie’s strength gave out. John gave a shriek of pain as he landed awkwardly, attempting to break his daughter’s fall while protecting his injured limb.
Rosie scrambled up in the dark, dank space and lit the lamp, then crouched down in front of her father to inspect him. The explosion had left his clothes in rags. Gingerly she lifted the ribbons of his trouser leg to expose the damage beneath. His shin was grazed and bloody and without a doubt broken. The bump beneath the flesh showed the bone was close to penetrating the skin’s surface.
Her father’s ashen features were screwed up in agony and Rosie noticed tears squeezing between his stubby lashes. She soothed him as he suddenly bellowed in pain.
‘Soon as it’s over I’ll go and get you help,’ she vowed. ‘We’ll be all right, Dad, we always are, aren’t we?’ She desperately wanted to believe what she was saying.
Rosie thumped the heel of her hand on her forehead to beat out the tormenting memories of the Café de Paris bombing. It seemed a very long while ago that she’d gone out with two of her friends from the Windmill Theatre for a jolly time drinking and dancing to ‘Snakehip’ Johnson’s band, and the night had ended in a tragedy. Three of them had entered the Café de Paris in high spirits but only two of them had got out alive.
Rosie forced the memories out of her mind. She sprang up and dragged one of the mattresses, kept there for use in the night-time air raids, closer to her father, then helped him roll off the floor and on to it to make him more comfortable. There was some bedding, too, and she unfolded a blanket and settled it over him, then placed a pillow beneath his head.
Sinking down beside her father, Rosie pressed her quaking torso against her knees, her arms over her head as the house rocked on its foundations. Another bomber must have evaded the Spitfire to shed its deadly cargo.
‘We’ve taken a belting … that’s this place finished … we’ll need a new place to live,’ John wheezed out between gasps of pain, his voice almost drowned out by the crashing of collapsing timbers and shattering glass. ‘Come here, Rosie.’ He held out his arms. ‘If we’re gonners I want to give you a last cuddle. Be brave, dear … I love you, y’know.’
They clung together, terrified, the smell of John’s blood and sweaty fear mingling in Rosie’s nostrils. After what seemed like an hour but was probably no more than a few minutes the dreadful sounds of destruction faded and the tension went out of John. Pulling free of his daughter’s embrace he flopped back on the mattress, breathing hard.
‘That’s it over then, if we’re lucky. Everything seemed all right while we still had this place.’
Rosie knew what her father meant. This had been the house her parents had lived in from when they were married, and it was Rosie’s childhood home. Wincing as she picked a shard of glass from her knee, Rosie mentally reviewed their options. Doris lived in Hackney and she might let them stay with her until the housing department found them something. Then Rosie remembered the woman had stomped out, making it clear she wasn’t getting landed with kids …
As though the memory drifted back through a fog in her mind Rosie realised that it wasn’t just her and Dad any more. Her baby was upstairs. She’d saved her own skin and her father’s, oblivious to the fact that there were three of them now. Her little girl was all alone and defenceless in the front room and she’d not even remembered her, let alone made an effort to protect her from the bombing.
Rosie pushed herself to her feet. She stood for less than a second garnering energy and breath, then launched herself up the cellar steps, her hands and knees bloodied in the steep scramble as she lost her footing on the bricks in her insane haste. The door was open a few inches and she flew into it to run out but something had fallen at the other side, jamming it ajar. With a feral cry of fury Rosie barged her arm again and again into the door until it moved slightly and she could squeeze through the aperture. Frenziedly she kicked at the obstacles blocking her way.
Masonry from the shattered kitchen wall was piled in the hallway but she bounded over it, falling to her knees as the debris underfoot shifted, then jumping back up immediately. She’d no need to fight her way into the front room. The door had fallen flat and taken the surround and some of the plaster with it.
Rosie burst in, her chest heaving. The top of the pram was covered in rubble and a part of the window frame, jagged with glass, lay on the hood.
Flinging off the broken timbers, she swept away debris with hands and forearms, uncaring of the glass fragments ripping into her flesh. Oozing blood became caked with dust, forming thick calluses on her palms.
Hot tears streamed wide tracks down her mucky face as finally she gazed into the pram. Very carefully she put down the hood, and removed the rain cover. She was alive! Rosie picked up her daughter, wrapped in her white shawl, and breathed in the baby’s milky scent, burying her stained face against soft warm skin until the infant whimpered in protest at the vice-like embrace.
‘Thank you, God … oh, thank you …’ Rosie keened over and over again as the white shawl turned pink in her cut hands. She bent over the tiny baby as though she would again absorb her daughter into herself to keep her safe. Her quaking fingers raced up and down the little limbs, checking for damage, but the infant’s gurgling didn’t seem to be prompted by pain.
‘Let’s go and find Granddad, shall we?’ Rosie softly hiccuped against her daughter’s downy head. ‘Come on then, my darling. I’m so sorry; I swear I’ll never ever leave you again.’
When she pushed open the cellar door Rosie found her father had crawled to the bottom step and was in the process of pulling himself up it. He choked on a sob as he saw them, flopping back down against the wall.
‘I forgot about her, too,’ he gasped through his tears. ‘What sort of people are we to do something like that?’ He shook his head in despair, wailing louder. ‘It’s my fault. I was too concerned about meself to even think about saving me granddaughter.’
‘It’s all right, Dad. She’s fine, look …’ Rosie anchored the baby against her shoulder in a firm grip, then descended as quickly as she could, hanging onto the handrail. ‘Look, Dad!’ she comforted her howling father. Gently she unwrapped the child to show her father that the baby was unharmed. ‘We’re not used to having her around yet … that’s all it is. No harm done. She’s in better shape than us,’ Rosie croaked. She felt a fraud for trying to make light of it when her heart was still thudding crazily with guilt and shame.
John blew his nose. For a long moment he simply stared at his granddaughter, then he turned his head. ‘Can see now that you’re right, Rosie,’ he started gruffly. ‘She’d be better off elsewhere. Let somebody else care for her, ’cos we ain’t up to it, that’s for sure.’
Somewhere in the distance was a muffled explosion, but neither John nor Rosie heeded it, both lost in their own thoughts. Rosie settled down on the mattress. Her lips traced her daughter’s hairline, soothing the baby as she became restless. She placed the tiny bundle down beside her and covered her in a blanket, tucking the sides in carefully.
John studied his wristwatch. ‘Time for her bottle. I’ll watch her if you want to go and get it.’ Muffling moans of pain, he wriggled closer to peer at the baby’s dust-smudged face. He took out from a pocket his screwed-up hanky.
‘No! Don’t use that, Dad. It’s filthy; I’ll wash her properly later … when we go upstairs.’ Rosie smiled to show her father she appreciated his concern. But she wasn’t having him wiping her precious daughter’s face with his snot rag.
‘She’s hungry,’ John said, affronted by his daughter’s telling off.
Rosie made to get up, then sank back down to the mattress again. ‘Kitchen’s blown to smithereens. Won’t find the bottles or the milk powder; won’t be able to wash her either, if the water’s off.’ She began unbuttoning her bodice. ‘I’ll feed her,’ she said. Turning a shoulder to her father so as not to embarrass him, she helped the child to latch onto a nipple. Her breasts were rock hard with milk, hot and swollen, but she put up with the discomfort, biting her lip against the pain. She encouraged the baby to feed with tiny caresses until finally she stopped suckling and seemed to fall asleep with a sated sigh.
‘What you gonna call her?’ John whispered. He had rolled over onto his side, away from mother and child to give them some privacy. His voice sounded different: high-pitched with pain still, but there was an underlying satisfaction in his tone.
Rosie smiled to herself, wondering how her father knew she’d been thinking about names for her daughter. ‘Hope …’ she said on a hysterical giggle. ‘Seems right … so that’s what I’m choosing. Hope this bloody war ends soon … hope we get a place to live … hope … hope … hope …’
‘Hope the doctors sort me bloody leg out for us, I know that.’ John joined in gruffly with the joke.
‘You’ll be right as rain with a peg leg … Long John Silver,’ Rosie teased.
They both chuckled although John’s laughter ended in a groan and he shifted position to ease his damaged limb.
In her mind Rosie knew she’d chosen her daughter’s name for a different reason entirely from those she’d given. Her greatest hope was that her daughter would forgive her if she ever discovered that she’d abandoned her like that. The poor little mite could have suffocated to death if she’d not been uncovered in time. Or the weight of the shattered window frame on top of the pram might even-tually have crushed the hood and her daughter’s delicate skull. The idea that Hope might have suffered a painful death made bile rise in Rosie’s throat. She closed her eyes and forced her thoughts to her other hope.
She hoped that Nurse Johnson would forgive her. The woman desperately wanted to be a mother, and Rosie had promised her that her dream would be real. Rosie sank back on the mattress beside Hope and curved a protective arm over her daughter as she slept, a trace of milk circling her mouth.
But Rosie had no intention of allowing anybody to take her Hope away now. She’d do anything to keep her.
‘Hear that Dad?’
‘What … love?’ John’s voice was barely audible.
‘Bells … ambulance or fire engine is on its way. You’ll be in hospital soon,’ she promised him. While she’d been cuddling her little girl she’d heard her father’s groans although he’d been attempting to muffle the distressing sounds.
‘Ain’t going to hospital; they can patch me up here,’ he wheezed.
‘Don’t be daft!’ Rosie said but there was a levity in her tone that had been absent before. She couldn’t be sure which of the services was racing to their aid and she didn’t care. She was simply glad that somebody might turn up and know what to do if her father passed out from the pain that was making him gasp, because she hadn’t got a clue.
‘Anybody home?’
The shouted greeting sounded cheery and Rosie jumped up, clutching Hope to her chest. This time she emerged carefully into their wrecked hallway rather than plunging out as she had when in a mad scramble to rescue her daughter. A uniformed woman of about Doris’s age was picking her way over the rubble in Rosie’s direction.
‘Well, you look right as ninepence,’ the auxiliary said with a grin. ‘So does the little ’un.’ The woman nodded at Hope, now asleep in Rosie’s arms. ‘Can’t say the same for the house though, looks like a bomb’s hit it.’ She snorted a chuckle.
Rosie found herself joining in, quite hysterically for a few seconds. ‘Dad’s in the cellar … broken leg. He caught the blast in the back garden.’
‘Righto … let’s take a shufti.’ The woman’s attitude had changed to one of brisk efficiency and she quickened her pace over the rubble.
Even when she heard her father protesting about being manhandled, Rosie left them to it downstairs. She had instinctively liked the ambulance auxiliary and she trusted the woman to know what she was doing. A moment later when she heard her father grunt an approximation of one of his chuckles Rosie relaxed, knowing the auxiliary had managed to find a joke to amuse him too. Stepping carefully over debris towards the splintered doorway she stopped short, not wanting to abandon her father completely by going outside even though the all clear was droning. She found a sound piece of wall and leaned back on it, rocking side to side, eyes closed and crooning a lullaby to Hope, who slept contentedly on, undisturbed by the pandemonium in the street.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u6ea850f4-5fc7-5a18-b4a9-14062a3abf77)
‘My, oh my, look how she’s grown. Only seems like yesterday little Hope was born.’ Peg Price stepped away from the knot of women congregated by the kerb. They were all wearing a uniform of crossover apron in floral print with their hair bundled inside scarves knotted atop their heads. Peg ruffled the child’s flaxen curls. ‘She’ll be on her feet soon, won’t she, love?’
To a casual observer the meeting might have seemed friendly, but Rosie knew differently and wasn’t having any of it. She attempted to barge past the weedy-looking woman blocking her way. But Peg Price was no pushover and stood her ground.
‘Some of ’em are late starters,’ another woman chipped in, eyeing the toddler sitting in her pram. ‘Don’t you worry, gel, kids do everything in their own sweet time.’
‘I’m not worried about a thing, thanks.’ Rosie gave a grim smile, attempting to manoeuvre around the trio of neighbours stationed in front of her. They were all aware that her daughter was walking because they spied over the fences and watched Hope playing in the back garden.
Even after two years the local gossips hadn’t given up on probing for a bit of muck to rake over. Rosie knew what really irked them was that she had so far managed to remain unbowed by their malice. She’d never crept about, embarrassed. She’d brazened out their snide remarks about her daughter’s birth. And her father and Doris had done likewise.
After the Gardiners’ home had been destroyed at the bottom end of the street the council had rehoused them in the same road, so they were still neighbours with the Price family.
‘Coming up to her second birthday, by my reckoning.’ Peg stepped into the road to foil Rosie’s next attempt to evade her.
‘She’s turned two.’ Rosie glared into a pair of spiteful eyes.
‘Shame about yer ’usband, ain’t it? Proud as punch, he’d be, of that little gel.’ May Reed chucked the child under her rosy chin. ‘’Course, she’ll ask about her daddy, so you’ll be ready with some answers for the kid, eh, love?’
‘Yeah, I’ve already thought of that, thanks all the same for your concern.’ Rosie’s sarcasm breezed over her shoulder as she moved on, ignoring May’s yelp as the pram clouted her hip.
‘Looks like you, don’t she, Rosie? Just as well, ain’t it?’
It wasn’t the sly comment but Peg Price’s tittering that brought Rosie swinging about. ‘Yeah, she’s just like me: blonde and pretty. Lucky, aren’t I, to have a daughter like that? Jealous?’ Rosie’s jaunty taunt floated in her wake as she marched on.
It wasn’t in Rosie’s nature to be vindictive, but she was happy to give as good as she got where those three old cows were concerned. Over two years Peg and her cronies had done their best to browbeat her into admitting her baby was a bastard and she was ashamed of Hope. But she’d never been ashamed of Hope, even in those early days when she’d considered giving her away.
Everybody knew how to shut Peg Price up: rub the woman’s nose in the fact that her only child was an ugly brat. If anybody was ashamed of their own flesh and blood it was Peg. Not only was Irene a spotty, sullen teenager, she had a reputation for chasing after boys.
‘Conceited bleedin’ madam, ain’t yer?’ Peg had caught up with Rosie and grabbed her arm. All pretence at geniality had vanished.
‘Well, that’s ’cos I’ve got something to be conceited about.’ Rosie wrenched herself free of the woman’s chapped fingers. ‘Bet you wish your Irene could say the same, don’t you?’
‘What d’yer mean by that?’ Peg snarled, shoving her cardigan sleeves up to her elbows in a threatening way. ‘Come on, spit it out, so I can ram it back down yer throat.’
Rosie gave her a quizzical look. Peg’s pals were enjoying the idea of a fight starting. May Reed had poked her tongue into the side of her cheek, her eyes alight with amusement as she waited expectantly for the first punch to be thrown.
‘You don’t want to let the likes of her talk to you like that, Peg.’ May prodded her friend’s shoulder when a tense silence lengthened and it seemed hostilities might flounder.
‘At least your Irene’s decent, unlike some I could mention.’ Lou Rawlings snorted her two penn’orth. ‘Widow, my eye! I reckon that’s a bleedin’ brass curtain ring.’ She pointed a grimy fingernail at Rosie’s hand, resting on the pram handle.
‘Decent, is she, your Irene?’ Rosie echoed, feigning surprise and ostentatiously twisting her late mother’s thin gold band on her finger. ‘Go ask Bobby West about that then …’cos I heard different, just yesterday.’
Rosie carried on up the road with abuse hurled after her. She already felt bad about opening her mouth and repeating what Doris had told her. Peg’s daughter had been spotted behind the hut in the local rec with Bobby West.
Although they’d lived close for many years the gap in their ages meant Rosie and Irene had never been friends. Previously they’d just exchanged a hello or a casual wave; once Irene found out who’d dropped her in it Rosie reckoned she’d get ignored … or thumped by Irene. In a way she felt sorry for Peg’s daughter. The poor girl had every reason to stomp about with her chops on her boots with that old dragon for a mother.
Lost in thought, Rosie almost walked straight past her house. They’d been rehoused for ages but the Dorniers had kept coming although their street had so far avoided further damage. She still headed automatically to her childhood home, further along. She found it upsetting to see the place in ruins so usually took a detour to avoid the bomb site it now was. She unlatched the wooden gate, fumbling in her handbag for her street door key. Glancing over a shoulder, Rosie noticed that trouble was on its way: Peg was marching in her direction with fat Lou and May flanking her. The unholy trinity, as her father called the local harridans, looked about to attack again before Rosie could make good her escape.
Rosie stuck her bag back under the cover of the pram then wheeled it about and set off along the road again. She was feeling so infuriated that, outnumbered or not, she felt she might just give Peg Price the scrap she was spoiling for. She wasn’t running scared of them; but Rosie was keen to avoid upsetting her little girl.
Hope was sensitive to raised voices and a bad atmosphere. Just yesterday her daughter had whimpered when Rosie had given Doris a mouthful. Rosie didn’t mind helping out with all the household chores, but she was damned if she was going to act as an unpaid skivvy for her new stepmother.
Since she’d moved in as Mrs Gardiner, Doris had made it clear she thought her husband’s daughter had outstayed her welcome and she’d only tolerate Rosie’s presence if she gained some benefit from it.
Rosie didn’t see herself as a rival for John’s affections, but Doris seemed to resent her nevertheless. Naturally, her father’s second wife wanted to be the most important person in her husband’s life. Unfortunately, John still acted as though his daughter and granddaughter had first claim on him. John and Doris weren’t exactly newlyweds, having got married six months ago, but Rosie thought that the couple were entitled to some privacy.
‘And so do I want some bloody privacy,’ she muttered to herself now. She dearly wished to be able to afford a room for herself and Hope, but the cheapest furnished room she’d found was ten shillings a week, too dear for her pocket. So for now, they’d all have to try to muddle along as best they could. On fine days like today Rosie often walked for miles because the balmy June air was far nicer than the icy atmosphere she was likely to encounter indoors.
Now that her daughter was potty-trained Rosie felt ready to find Hope a place at a day nursery so she could get a job. Her father had never fully recovered his fitness after they’d been bombed out and Rosie wasn’t sure he was up to the job of caring for a lively toddler, although he’d offered. Rosie didn’t want to be beholden to her stepmother. Doris had a job serving in a bakery and was always complaining about feeling tired after being on her feet all day.
Rosie turned the corner towards Holborn, tilting her face up to the sun’s golden warmth. It was late afternoon, but at this time of the year the heat and light lingered well into the evening. If John had prepared her tea he’d put the meal on the warming shelf for her to eat on her return.
‘Hey … is that you, Rosie Gardiner? Is it really you?’
Rosie was idly window-shopping by Gamages department store when she heard her name called. Pivoting about, she frowned at a brunette hurrying towards her bouncing a pram in front of her. She didn’t recognise the woman, and assumed she’d been spotted by a forgotten face from schooldays.
‘Don’t remember me, do you? Bleedin’ hell, Rosie! It’s only been a few years!’ The newcomer grinned, wobbling Rosie’s arm to jolt an answer from her. ‘I can’t have changed that much.’
It was the young woman’s rough dialect and unforgettably infectious smile that provided a clue. The poor soul had changed; in a short space of time her acquaintance from the Windmill Theatre looked as though she’d aged ten years. If Rosie had relied on looks alone to jog her memory, she’d never have identified her. ‘Oh … of course I remember you. It’s Gertie … Gertie Grimes, isn’t it?’
Gertie nodded, still smiling. Then she gave a grimace. ‘It’s all right, nobody from the old days recognises me. Look a state, don’t I?’ She sighed in resignation.
‘No …’ Rosie blurted, then bit her lip. There was no point in lying. Gertie Grimes was nobody’s fool, Rosie remembered, and wouldn’t appreciate being treated as one. ‘Been a bloody long war, Gertie, hasn’t it?’ she said sympathetically.
‘Oh, yeah …’ Gertie drawled wearily. ‘And it ain’t done yet.’
‘There’s an end in sight, though, now the troops have landed in Normandy.’ Rosie gave the woman’s arm a rub, sensing much had happened in Gertie’s life since they’d last spoken to make her sound so bitter.
‘Perhaps we’ll be having a victory knees-up soon.’ Gertie brightened. ‘Come on, tell me all about it.’ She nodded at the little girl spinning the beads threaded on elastic strung between the pram hood fixings. ‘Beauty, she is; what’s her name?’ Gertie lifted Rosie’s hand and saw the wedding ring. ‘I suppose you married an army general to make me really jealous. I remember the top brass were always fighting over you at the Windmill. Could’ve had yer pick, couldn’t you; all the girls envied you.’
‘I was a bit of a show-off, wasn’t I?’ Rosie replied with a rueful smile. ‘Her name’s Hope; but you go first. I remember you had boys, but this isn’t a boy.’ Rosie tickled the cheek of the little girl with dark brown hair and her mother’s eyes. The child looked to be a few months older than Hope and the two little girls were now leaning towards each other sideways, giggling, to clasp hands.
‘Never got a chance to tell you I was pregnant, did I, ’cos I left soon as I found out?’ It was a fib; Gertie had concealed her pregnancy for quite some time from everyone at work, and from her cuckolded husband. ‘She’s called Victoria and she’s gone two and a half now.’
