Birmingham Rose (8 page)

‘In the slums, you mean. Well, if you’re asking me, I’d say do it. I’ll be frank with you, Mr Harper-Watt. I’m not a churchgoer myself, but I’ve been to more than the odd wedding and funeral at St Joseph’s and that Reverend Gasbag, or whatever he calls himself, he ain’t living in the same world as the rest of us. We could do with someone a bit more human like you.’

Ronald sat back, feeling he’d received a great compliment.

‘And by the way.’ Now Dora had found her tongue again she couldn’t seem to stop using it. ‘I’ve never thanked you and your wife for all your kindness to my Rose. You’ve done a lot for her. And your Diana’s a good kid. I thought it wasn’t on at first, them two being pals, but now I’m glad it’s happened.’ And she almost smiled.

‘We think Rose is a marvellous girl,’ Ronald said, sipping his cup of extremely sweet tea, and to his surprise enjoying it. ‘We’re all very fond of her. She’s a bright child, you know. Given the right opportunities she could go far.’

Even as he spoke, Ronald realized that he was talking out of a different world. Opportunities were not things that had arisen much in Dora’s life. She just nodded at him.

When he got up to leave they shook hands, warmly.

‘Thank you for talking to me,’ he said. ‘And for the advice.’

‘It were good of you to come,’ Dora said bravely. ‘I know I can’t sit moping here forever. Life has to go on, and I’ve got my young genius to look out for!’

In silence Rose watched his tall figure walk across the court. Just before disappearing through the entry he turned and waved to her. At that moment she really thought he must be an angel.

‘I’ve got a job!’

They were Rose’s first words as soon as Diana opened the door.

‘Jolly well done.’ Diana beamed at her. ‘I’m so glad.’

Catherine came into the hall to add her congratulations, looking as stately as ever. She was wearing a cool, cream dress that flattered her curves and her thick hair was pinned up in a fashionable style round her head.

‘Come and have a glass of home-made lemon,’ she said to Rose. ‘We were just sitting outside.’

They went out to the back of the house where there was a blue-brick terrace facing the old walled garden. Tendrils of wisteria hung down from the house and the garden felt warm and languid as bees buzzed round the hollyhocks and tiny yellow roses climbing the garden wall.

Judith looked up from the book she was reading on her lap. She was quite unlike Diana and William, with a smaller frame and dark hair and eyes. ‘Hello Rose,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’re all going to talk now.’ She slipped off the chair and went to lie with the book on her stomach on the grass.

‘Come on, tell us about the job,’ Diana said as she sat down. ‘Was it the first one?’

‘Yes,’ Rose said proudly. ‘My first interview. It’s at Lazenby’s Butcher’s Remnants Company near the market. They deal with all the bits of the animals that people don’t want to eat. The whole name of the firm is Lazenby’s Butcher’s Remnants Co. and then in brackets, Skin, Hide, Fat, Wool etc.,’ she recited proudly.

‘Goodness, that sounds a bit gruesome,’ Catherine said. She was afraid Rose had jumped impulsively into the first job that would employ her simply because she was so anxious not to go into service or on to the factory floor. Which was in fact not far from the truth.

‘It does stink round there a bit,’ Rose admitted. ‘But I’m their new office girl. I start on Monday. And the offices are ever so nice. They’re upstairs above the yard.’ She was all puffed up with pride.

‘So what did you have to do?’ Diana asked, dipping shortbread into her glass. She saw Catherine frown at her.

‘There was two lads up for the job as well,’ Rose said, starting to enjoy herself. ‘And Mr Lazenby – that’s the gaffer of course – he said we had to show him how we could read and write. So I said to him, “I bet I can read and write better than either of them two.” And he made us write a few things down, addresses and that. And then we had to read him a bit out of a book.’

Rose had stood and read as well as she possibly could, remembering not to drop her aitches, which she could do when she thought about it, and trying to put expression in her voice.

‘And when I’d finished,’ she giggled, ‘Mr Lazenby said to me, “It’s all right, we’re not here to put on a Shakespeare play, you know. We just want a kid for round the office.” ’

But one of the boys had scarcely been able to read and write at all and the other, who seemed to be terrified of Rose, had read slowly, stumbling over the words. And Rose knew she had left school with an excellent reference from Miss Whiteley.

‘So he said the job was mine!’ she said. She didn’t tell them the last part, that Mr Lazenby had said, ‘Right. You can start Monday. You’ll be getting eight and six a week.’

‘Excuse me,’ Rose said politely. ‘But I thought it was ten shillings you was offering.’

‘Oh yes.’ Mr Lazenby stretched his jowly face into a smile. ‘But you’re a lass. We’ve only ever taken on boys before.’

Rose was a bit put out, but eight and six seemed a good amount to be taking home. Besides, she was proud to be the first girl that Lazenby’s had ever employed.

‘And I was thinking,’ she chattered on, not noticing in her excitement that the others were very subdued. ‘Just because I’ve left school doesn’t mean I can’t go on learning. You can teach me about all the things you’re learning at school, can’t you?’ At this moment, Rose felt she could do anything.

Diana was looking lovely in a pale blue dress, her wavy hair tied up in a bouncy ponytail. Her skin was tanned from playing tennis and sitting out in the garden. But Rose suddenly noticed her miserable expression. Emerging from her own preoccupations she looked across at Catherine and saw she too had a solemn face.

‘What’s the matter?’ She tried joking: ‘If I ever saw two people looking as if they’ve lost tuppence and found a farthing, you’re the ones!’

‘Rose,’ Catherine said, smiling kindly at her. She held her glass on the wood of the tabletop and slowly circled it round. ‘Don’t think we’re not delighted that you’ve found a job – and so quickly. It’s marvellous news. It’s just that we have some news as well, and we’re not sure yet whether it’s good news or not.’

‘You may not be sure,’ Diana said, scowling. ‘But I am.’

‘Well go on – what is it?’ Rose spread her long dark fingers on top of the table as if preparing herself for a shock.

Gently Catherine explained that Ronald had been looking for a new kind of job, and that as the diocese had not been able to place him in Birmingham he had accepted a post in Manchester.

‘Manchester?’ Rose was completely knocked for six. It might as well have been Australia. She wasn’t even precisely sure where Manchester was. ‘But what about your school, Di? And your pals? I’ll never see you again if you all go up there.’

Rose’s eyes filled with tears, and Diana was already crying.

‘It’s really rotten,’ she sobbed angrily. ‘Daddy decides he wants a different job and the rest of us have to change everything.’

‘Look darling,’ Catherine said to her outraged daughter. ‘I know you think it’s not what you want, but you won’t know until you’ve gone and tried it. And when you’ve settled in, I’m quite sure you’ll make friends every bit as good as you’ve got here.’

She wasn’t aware of the appalling tactlessness of her last remark and its effect on their visitor.

But Diana said, ‘It’ll be beastly. And I’ll never find another friend like Rose. How can you even think it?’ She got up and put her slim arm round Rose’s shoulders. Rose’s lips were trembling with the effort of not crying.

‘Oh, goodness, Rose,’ Catherine corrected herself, horrified. ‘I didn’t mean – oh my poor child, I’m so sorry. How awfully rude of me. But Diana will be able to come down on the train in the holidays and visit.’

‘What, and sleep at our house?’ Rose asked, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

Catherine chose to ignore the girl’s tone, knowing she was upset. ‘Not necessarily. There are other friends of ours whom she could stay with.’

Rose stared into her lap. A tight, mutinous feeling was rising up inside her. She wanted to scream and throw all the glasses off the table. Horrible things were happening again that she couldn’t do anything about, just as she thought she was beginning to get somewhere. Her joy at having found her job was for the moment completely wiped away.

‘Listen girls,’ Catherine said, looking at the two sullen and tearful faces in front of her. She leaned one of her plump elbows on the table. ‘I know it’s bad news and none of us is pleased about it. Judith and William are upset as well. But we’ve all got to make the best of it. And it’s not happening for a couple of months yet, so let’s all be brave and enjoy the time we have got here together, shall we?’

Catherine changed the subject, talking about the civil war that was breaking out in Spain, and how she felt that Mr Stanley Baldwin was not doing any better than the Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald had at tackling the problem of people out of work. Both the girls realized she was trying to say how small their problem was compared to some of the big things going on in the world. But of course that didn’t make them feel any better. Already it felt as if things were not the same. And Rose had a feeling that now they never would be.

It took the employees at Lazenby’s a few weeks to get used to having a girl in the office. There was Miss Peters of course, but she was old enough to be most people’s mother, if not grandmother.

Rose became a familiar figure, running errands to and from the traders on the balcony of the huge meat market, delivering statements and cheques and invoices. At first they ribbed her because she was a girl, but after a few weeks she often heard, ‘Hello Rose! All right Rose!’ from the lads as she made her way round between the office and the trading area.

One part of the job she didn’t like was running messages down to the yard at the back of Lazenby’s. She found she was surprisingly squeamish about what went on down there. She’d already seen the slaughter yard at Camp Hill. Groups of kids often gathered there to watch when they did the killing early in the morning and she’d been dragged along once by Sam. The dogs chivvied the cows or sheep a dozen at a time into the pen which was open for all to see behind a fence of palings. The slaughterers caught the animals one by one as they shrieked, sweating in terror and running at the fence trying to escape. They drove a sharp stick like a poker into their heads through whichever orifice they could reach to penetrate the brain of the flailing, screaming animal. In through the eyes or ears until the damage inflicted on them reached their whole bodies and they writhed and twitched and finally lay still.

In the yard of Lazenby’s they dealt with everything leftover that could be sold. When Rose went down there the first time the stench turned her stomach. Slightly sweet and putrid, it was a smell she never got used to. The brick floor of the yard was covered with piles of cow hides which had to be examined to see if they had been holed by warble fly. Then they were rubbed over with salt and stacked in piles graded according to size. Sheep fleeces were dealt with in the same way.

Each time she went down there she had to contain her revulsion for the place and put up with the constant gibing of the yard men. The first time she stepped out into the yard they all straightened up from what they were doing and stood staring at her in their rubber boots and aprons, giving each other mischievous grins and making smart-alec comments. One of them was hideously disfigured. His head and neck ran into each other and a goitre was slung like a squashed pig’s bladder right round to the back. A cluster of bristles sprouted out of his nose.

‘What’re you doing here then?’ one of them called to her. ‘Come to do a turn for us, have you?’

‘I’ve got a note for Mr Freeman actually,’ Rose said timidly. They were gawping like idiots as she stood in the navy skirt and soft pink blouse that Catherine and Diana had bought for her – new! – as a present for starting work.

‘Ew – ectually!’ they mimicked.

Rose slowly walked across the yard where there were small pieces of gristle and fat and furry bits stuck on to and in between the bricks. She slipped and nearly fell on a lump of something yellow and greasy.

‘Watch your step,’ they sniggered.

‘This is where we keep some of the, er – accessories of the job,’ the goitre man said mockingly.

The smells and the fatty lumps on the ground and the great mauve bulge on the man’s neck were already getting all mixed up in her mind. He took her forearm with his huge hairy hand and led her towards a row of bunkers at one side of the yard. Inside two of them she could see roughly picked bones piled all together, and in the other, glutinous mounds of fat. Shiny green flies were buzzing round greedily.

‘And this one’s where we keep the salt for the hides.’

Rose could hear the goitre man’s heavy breathing as he stood beside her. She looked into the end bunker at the off-white heap of salt. Immediately she became aware that the pile was moving. It was a mass of maggots rubbing ceaselessly against each other’s bodies and between the large granules of salt.

Rose knew what the man wanted. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking squeamish, even though the sight sickened her. ‘Well, thanks for the guided tour,’ she said pertly, keeping her face quite calm. ‘Now, which of you gentlemen is Mr Freeman?’

The man pointed his thick arm, letting go of Rose with the other. ‘Him over there.’

As Rose made to walk off he said, ‘Oi, just a minute. What part of town d’you come from then?’

‘Birch Street, near by there,’ Rose said.

‘So you are one of us then. You look a bit poshed up in them clothes, that’s all.’

In the office, though, it was different altogether. There were three main rooms where they worked. Mr Lazenby’s office was up at the far end, shut off from the main workroom. You didn’t go into Mr Lazenby’s without permission and he sat with the door shut.

Rose sometimes knocked and crept in with messages. But she found Mr Lazenby disconcerting, although he was always polite to her, and even seemed to take an interest in her. He sat at his desk with its scratched leather top, all his things arranged on it extremely neatly: the blotter, penholder and account books or whatever he was dealing with. He was in his early fifties with a balding crown and soft, loose-looking cheeks. Rose expected them to slither down off his face at any moment. He had watery blue eyes and a rounded shiny nose. His manner was always quiet and courteous and he often asked how she was settling in with the firm and whether there were any problems.