At the Break of Day
Read At the Break of Day Online
Authors: Margaret Graham
Contents
It is 1946, and as Europe slowly picks itself up after the trauma of war, Rosie Norton faces a bright future in America. Evacuated in 1939 by her grandfather, she escaped the cramped streets of London to a new world in Pennsylvania.
Suddenly, at the age of sixteen, she is called home to a Britain bruised by war and still suffering the hardships that America knows nothing about.
While struggling to become accepted again by her family she is supported by her childhood sweetheart Jack.
Until Jack is sent to war in Korea and a homeless Rosie, together with the child he doesn’t know they have, is left to fend for herself in London.
Margaret Graham has been writing for thirty years. Her first novel was published in 1986 and since then she has written a further fourteen novels, and is now working on her fifteenth. As a bestselling author her novels have been published in the UK, Europe and the USA.
At the Break of Day
was previously published as
The Future is Ours.
Margaret has written two plays, co-researched a television documentary – which grew out of
Canopy of Silence
– and has written numerous short stories and features. She is a writing tutor and speaker and has written regularly for Writers’ Forum. She founded and administered the Yeovil Literary Prize to raise funds for the creative arts of the Yeovil area and it continues to thrive under the stewardship of one of her ex-students. Margaret now lives near High Wycombe and has launched Words for the Wounded which raises funds for the rehabilitation of wounded troops by donations and writing prizes.
She has ‘him indoors’, four children and three grandchildren who think OAP stands for Old Ancient Person. They have yet to understand the politics of pocket money. Margaret is a member of the Rock Choir, the WI and a Chair of her local U3A. She does Pilates and Tai Chi and travels as often as she can.
For more information about Margaret Graham visit her website at
www.margaret-graham.com
After the Storm (previously published as Only the Wind is Free)
Annie’s Promise
Somewhere Over England (previously published as A Fragment of Time)
A Time for Courage (previously published as A Measure of Peace)
Easterleigh Hall
For Mum, and Dad
I would like to thank Sheila Doering of the United States, Helen and Danny Buckley of Dorset, Jackie Gaines, Marian Farrow, Miss E. M. Glass of Somerset and of course Sue Bramble and her library team for their invaluable help with the research for this book.
Rosie gripped the ship’s rail, feeling the throb of the engines, feeling the surge of the ship through the sea, seeing Frank and Nancy standing so far away on the quay, so far away and so small. The wind was harsh and hot but it didn’t matter. It was 1946 and she was leaving America. That’s what mattered. She was leaving to return to a family and a country she had almost forgotten after six years as an evacuee and it was unbearable.
The wind carried spray into her face but still she stood there; there was nothing else she could do. Just stand and watch the two people she had grown to love become smaller. Just stand and wonder whether she would ever see them again, whether she would ever see the bedroom where she had read Grandpa’s letter three weeks ago and heard the jazz sweeping out from the gramophone, as always, across the sloping Pennsylvanian lawn.
No breeze had ruffled the maples, the sycamores or the chestnuts that day as she stood at the window. There were skis in the corner of the room, Cougar pennants on the wall. She had wanted to be a cheerleader but that wouldn’t happen now. The letter had said it was time she came home – there was a job waiting for her at Woolworths – it was only fair on Norah – the war was over and the two sisters should be together again.
From the ship, Rosie had to strain to see the two small figures. How could they be so small? Frank was big, with arms that had held her when she had finished reading the letter out to them in the kitchen. Nancy was large too, and had put her arms around them both and said, ‘We’ll write to your grandfather in London, Rosie. We’ll ask him to let you stay and complete your education, and become the journalist you want to be. We’ll tell him how much we have grown to love you.’
‘Woolworths, goddamn it,’ Nancy had said while ‘Rinso White, Rinso Blue’ filtered out from the wireless. ‘Woolworths for Christ’s sake.’ They had all had tears in their eyes which Frank blamed on the onions sliced up on the side for the evening’s barbecue. ‘Goddamn onions,’ he said and then stamped into his study, his pipe clenched between his teeth, and Nancy had laughed gently.
‘This’ll be the third he’s broken this year if he’s not careful,’ she said, ‘and the Sub-Editor will just love that. They’ve got a bet on that this year it’ll be three within six months.’
But Rosie hadn’t laughed. She had stood with Nancy’s arms around her, wanting to cling to this plump, grey-haired, blue-eyed woman who had become her mother, who had watched her grow from a ten-year-old English girl into a sixteen-year-old American. But she didn’t, because Nancy wasn’t her mother, was she? She had no mother. She had a grandfather whom she knew she had once loved, and a sister whom she had never known whether she loved or even liked, a sister who had never written.
The wind on the ship was steady, no longer snatching at her cotton jacket, just streaming past her, through her, and now she looked out to the yawning emptiness of the sea and the sky, beyond which lay England. But she wouldn’t think of that, or of Manhattan which was fading behind her. She would think instead of the lake, where they had gone the day after Frank had written the letter.
They went upstate each summer but this time it was different. This time they were waiting.
They had driven down through small towns which smelt of diesel as they passed the petrol stations. Her tanned legs had stuck to the seat in the heat. She could still feel the stubbled kiss from Uncle Bob who had wrapped his arms around her before she climbed into the car. His new jazz band had played at the barbecue the evening before.
He had hugged her and said, ‘If you go back, Rosie, don’t forget that it’s the half valving that sets jazz apart, gives it the variation in pitch, oh hell, which sets it above other music. You remember us, you remember jazz, you remember that we love you. You hear me now. And you scout out for bands to send me. I want one with a middle tone, hear me? I love you, hear me? I’m glad you came. You made me glad we fought with Europe.’
She heard him. She had heard him on a dark evening five years ago too when he had been an isolationist shouting at Frank in the living-room that there was no way the States should be drawn into a war. There was no way they should supply the Britishers. For Christ’s sake they wouldn’t even pay their debts. She had stood then, gripping the banister, shouting at him, ‘You silly old bugger. Over there the ’ouses are being bloody bombed. Me grandma’s been killed and there ain’t no kids in London any more. Even me best friend Jack’s ’ad to go to bloody Somerset and you carry on about bleedin’ money.’
The banister had been hard, but warm, unlike the ship’s rail she was still clutching.
Bob had called up, ‘Why did you run away then?’
And now she heard her voice as it had been then; so young, so different.
‘I didn’t. I was bloody sent. No one asked me. I was just sent.’
Rosie said those words again now, into the wind which stretched them out then scattered them. ‘No one asked me.’ And her voice was now an American drawl and there was the same anger in it that there had been then. ‘No one asked me, did they, Grandpa?’
They had stopped to eat at a roadside diner surrounded by walnut and ash trees and the earth had oozed out the last of its heat as they drove the last leg towards their wooden lake house. Rosie had stood in the hall. It had smelt the same, dry and warm, filled with the scent of pine. Frank’s rods were there, the old clock. But this time there was the dark sense of waiting.
She barely slept and rose with the dawn, not allowing herself to look out at the lake. She never did. She liked to feel the cool of the polished floors as she walked silently, barefoot, through the house, and then across the grass, and then the mulch of the woods before she saw the water. It was a ritual. It would keep her safe. But it hadn’t this time, had it?
Still beneath the trees she had heard the lake, rippling in across the stones and on up to the sand which might still be cool. Then she was out into the light and at last the lake was there, glinting, easing in across the shore. And yes, the sand was still cool and loose and fine-grained. There had been no storms recently then. No storms to force the water into three-foot waves, to smash down beyond the pebbles, soaking the sand.
Rosie looked out on to the grey sea now. The prow of the ship was slicing through the waves, her hair was thick with salt and still she could see the skyline of Manhattan and she knew that Frank and Nancy would remain there, waiting until she disappeared.
And so too they had waited at the lake, day after day, swimming, sitting, beating time to jazz; Erroll Garner, Billie Holiday, Bix Beiderbecke, always Bix, and Grandpa’s reply to Frank’s letter had not come.
On Nancy’s birthday, towards the end of June, they had driven to the Club, taking their costumes, swimming in the pool. She hailed her friend Sandra who was up here from town too. They sat on white wrought-iron chairs which dug into the grass at the edge of the terrace overlooking the pool. They slid ice-crowded glasses to the table’s edge to break the vacuum the condensation had produced. They sipped their Cokes, slowly. Behind them was the lawn which stretched back to the Clubhouse.
Frank passed them bourbon-soaked cherries from his and Nancy’s cocktails and the talk was of the latest jazz band Uncle Bob was promoting, or the parched grass back home behind the rhododendrons where the hose did not reach; anything but England. Anything but Grandpa. Anything but the waiting.
And then Joe came towards them from the Clubhouse – Joe who had been here last year, who had been a Senior at their school, who was now at College. Joe who she had thought was beautiful since she had arrived in Pennsylvania, who was even more beautiful now that she might be leaving. But no, she wouldn’t think of that. If she didn’t think of it, it might not happen.
He was nodding at the girls, holding his hand out to Frank.
‘Hi, Mr Wallen.’ His voice was deeper than last year. He was taller, more blond. The hairs on his arms were bleached by the sun. Sandra nudged her and grinned. Joe didn’t look, not then. But then he hadn’t looked last year either. He did after dinner, though, when he smiled, his teeth white against his tan, his watch gold against his skin, and he asked her to the Subscription Dance which was being organised to raise funds for a new tennis court.
That night she had dreamed that she was on a ship, like this ship, being pulled in half by Grandpa and Norah at the prow and Frank, Nancy and Joe aft.
But she’d gone to the dance, goddamn it, she thought as she pulled her jacket round her throat and let the wind tear more strongly at her clothes. Yes, I went to the dance.
She shut her eyes because the wind was dragging tears across her cheeks. That was all. Only the wind.