Birmingham Rose (9 page)

Once, when she had come in with a message from the meat market, he thanked her and then said, ‘Now, you just come round here a minute. I’ll show you a picture of my kids. My youngest daughter is about your age.’

Rose walked obediently round the desk and leaned forward a little to look at the photograph. She suddenly felt Mr Lazenby’s breath close to her ear and jumped back abruptly.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Don’t be nervous, my dear.’ And he put his arm round her waist for a moment in a fatherly sort of way to reassure her.

The photograph was another of the items placed neatly on his desk.

‘There, you see,’ he said. ‘My two sons and my little girl.’

Three faces smiled rather stiffly out of the grey photograph. They all looked very well dressed and one of the boys closely resembled Mr Lazenby.

‘Thank you,’ said Rose, blushing. Mr Lazenby was staring at her and she didn’t like being this close to him. He always smelt rather stale and sweaty. ‘It’s very nice of you to show me.’

‘You’re a good lass,’ he said as she escaped out of the door, her feet sounding too loud on the lino floor.

At the other end of the long office space there was a storeroom for stationery, next to the stairs, and the office in between was where Rose spent most of her time. She dealt with the post and record cards and the stencilling machine. In the same office Miss Peters did the main secretarial work, and Michael Gillespie, the clerk, kept the books.

Michael was seventeen. He towered over Rose, his black hair slicked back very smartly and his blue eyes full of warmth and fun. To Rose, Michael might have been a whole generation older than herself. He seemed so grown-up and knowing about the world, and he was already learning a proper skill which he could take on to other firms.

‘I don’t want to be stuck as an office dogsbody for the rest of my life,’ he told her. Rose could hear the very slight Irish intonation in his voice even though he’d been born and brought up in Birmingham. ‘There’s all the world waiting out there . . .’ He moved one of his strong fingers along the frayed edge of a ledger with a grin on his face, pretending it was a plane taking off. ‘Lazenby’s is just my runway to greater things.’

‘What greater things?’ Rose asked curiously, franking a pile of letters that Miss Peters had completed.

‘Well now, little Rosie, let me see.’ Michael sat back in the chair with the air of a tycoon surveying his latest acquisition. ‘There’s all sorts of things. One of these days I’m going to be running my own business. With a big office. And I’ll be able to sit at my desk and send someone running for cups of tea. And I’ll tell you what: you and Miss Peters can come and work for me!’ He sat forward again, laughing loudly. ‘What do you say, Miss Peters?’

‘I can hardly wait,’ Miss Peters said, looking across at him over her round, black-rimmed spectacles. ‘Rose, are those letters going out this week – this month even?’

Rose smiled wryly at Michael, who jumped up and went to lean impishly over the back of Miss Peters’ black Remington typewriter.

‘You know what a wonderful woman you are, don’t you?’ He smiled appealingly, bending his head down towards her. ‘So efficient, so correct, such a sense of humour. You’re an example to us all.’ He sensed that Miss Peters was coming round to his charm in her prickly way. ‘Sure,’ he said, bouncing back to his desk. ‘I’d have you to work for me any time!’

Miss Peters made noises of exasperation and gestured at Rose to get off to the post. She ran down the stairs, laughing.

Rose was happy. She treasured the thought of Dora’s proud face as she set off, all dressed up on her first morning, and then when Rose had brought home her first wages. Even the pain of saying goodbye to Diana the week before seemed lightened by the fun she had in the office.

She had been at work on the day they actually left, so they said their goodbyes on the Sunday before. Ronald and Catherine had both embraced Rose as well as Diana, and even William shook her by the hand, rather stiffly, and said, ‘I hope we shall see you again, Rose.’

‘You’d blooming better,’ Rose said, being all joky so she didn’t start crying. ‘I’ll expect you down here to see me as soon as you can, Di.’

‘Oh, I shall come, I shall. But you must write to me very, very often. I shall miss you so much.’

They’d given each other a long big hug. They didn’t want to let go, and promised each other all kinds of things: above all, letters. And Rose had waved goodbye as she started for home, choked with sadness. When she reached her house she cried and cried.

Later she told Geraldine Donaghue that Diana had left. The girl’s face lit up maliciously. The two had spent a lot of time together at school, but Geraldine had always remained jealous of Diana, knowing that she and Rose shared something very special.

‘Going to lower yourself to speak to the rest of us now are you?’ Geraldine said.

‘I’ve always spoken to you,’ Rose said impatiently. ‘You know that very well. And if you hadn’t always been so green round the gills about Diana we could’ve been better friends all the time.’

‘Hark at her,’ Geraldine said. ‘Miss High and Mighty.’

Rose knew Geraldine was sore because she hated her boring factory job, and her dad had been laid off again. She knew the Donaghues were struggling, and none of it did much to improve Theresa Donaghue’s temper.

But Rose was not very bothered about Geraldine. She had only to be in Michael’s cheeky, vivacious company for a few minutes and she felt renewed and lively herself. She had been attracted to him from the first day there, though she was not thinking about courting. She knew Michael was a regular on the Stratford Road monkey-run and had had a succession of dates. She was very childlike and innocent still about relations between men and women, although she knew that sometimes she was flirting with him. Mainly he provided a figure for her to look up to, who had an infectious kind of drive and wanted to put a lot into his life and get a lot out of it. He made her feel more alive.

‘You’re a funny kid,’ he said to her one day as they were working together. Miss Peters, despite her crustiness, was very tolerant of their conversation so long as she knew the work would be done.

Michael looked appraisingly at Rose. ‘You come down here from Birch Street all dressed up in nice clothes that would set anyone back a bit. And sometimes you talk common like the rest of us, and other times you can turn it on and put on your aitches and sound quite posh. What’s your secret, eh, little Rosie?’ He grinned at her. ‘Are you a foundling from Buckingham Palace or something?’

‘That’d be telling, wouldn’t it?’ she said rather pertly, and she knew once again that there was a mild flirtation going on between them.

She had come to Lazenby’s with enormous hopes, to learn, as a way of getting experience for better things and eventually moving on.

But not yet, she thought. I’ll stay and enjoy it while it lasts.

The summer ended. Rose walked to work on fine days in the rich slanting light of autumn. When it grew colder she put on Diana’s coat – one of a number of pieces of clothing that the family had left for her – and walked more briskly.

Though still small and thin Rose was not as painfully bony as she had been during the poorest days of her childhood. She was of a different build from Dora, more rounded, and her breasts had begun to fill out. With her dark wavy hair cut to the level of her chin and softly brushed back from her face and wearing Diana’s well-cut clothes she looked surprisingly elegant for someone so young. Her brown eyes shone with vigour and intelligence.

Twice every day she passed builders working on a nearby warehouse whose scaffold extended out across the pavement so she had to skirt round piles of bricks and a cement mixer. The lads working on the site, their boots dusted grey, gave appreciative whistles as she walked by.

It didn’t take her long to notice that one of the young brickies had taken quite a shine to her. As the days passed he seemed to be waiting for her, watching quietly. He wasn’t one of the whistlers. He was a thin, pale lad with spiky brown hair that looked as if no amount of Bryl or any other creem would force it to lie flat.

Then he began to smile at her and say hello whenever she walked by. Once, when she had almost passed them, she heard the others egging him on, ‘Go on – go and ask her name!’

Suddenly the nervous boy was beside her. ‘Er . . .’ The words stumbled out clumsily. ‘I just wondered – I mean – what’s your name?’

‘Rose,’ she replied, amused. ‘And what’s yours?’

‘Alfie,’ he said. ‘That is – Alfred – Meredith.’

‘Oh,’ Rose said. ‘Hello then, Alfie.’

Alfie seemed to be quite struck dumb and as Rose was still hurrying on down the road he said, ‘Tara then.’

‘Tara,’ Rose said smiling, attaching no real importance to the meeting.

She was still smiling when she reached Lazenby’s and walked into the office. Michael was already sitting behind his desk and he looked up and grinned when he saw her. ‘All right, little Rosie?’ he said. ‘Don’t you look a picture this morning? Had some good news or what?’

‘Yes I have.’ She took her camel coat off and hung it up. ‘A letter from Diana.’

Rose had gradually told Michael about Diana and her own hopes to get on and do something with her life. She was rather afraid at first that he’d laugh at her and tell her she’d not got a hope. Sometimes she couldn’t make Michael out. He could be as kind and generous as anyone she’d ever met – even Diana – and innocent as she was, she realized that the hunger for life they both shared resulted in an electric kind of attraction between them. But there was also a wild streak in him. She knew he was already beginning to drink heavily, and he had come into the office a number of times with his face cut and bruised from fights.

When she told him her greatest ambition was to become a teacher of young children he looked at her and gave a low whistle.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘You’re quite a girl, aren’t you? Can’t quite see you as one of them blue-stocking women though – let alone how you’re going to get there. But good luck to you all the same.’

She knew it was not an ambition he could really understand, but she was grateful to him for not making fun of her.

And hearing from Diana was always encouraging.

‘I can’t wait until Christmas when I come down to see you,’ Diana wrote.

I miss you and Birmingham so much. My school is all right I suppose, but I haven’t really made any friends properly yet. The school is rather a long way from where we live, as we knew it would be. So William, Judith and I all have to go to school on the bus every day. Mummy says it’s good for us! But I don’t like Manchester as much as Birmingham.

She told Rose that her father was enjoying his new job and Catherine was getting stuck into things as ever.

Missing you ever such a lot. With love from your good friend,

Diana. xxx

Things were looking less cheerful for Dora. She was pregnant again. At nearly forty-three she’d hoped this kind of sickness was something she’d seen the back of. And this time it came with an intensity and violence that she recognized from nearly twenty years earlier. It could mean only one thing.

‘It’s twins, I’m sure of it,’ she wailed to Rose and Grace as they helped her back up the stairs to bed. ‘I’ve only been sick this bad with babbies once before and that was with Sid and Percy. What the hell am I going to do? Twins at my age!’

‘It might not be twins, Mom,’ Grace tried to reassure her as they helped her on to the bed, so weak from the incessant retching that she could barely stand. ‘It might just be your age making it worse.’

‘Ooh,’ Dora groaned. ‘I feel as if someone’s trampled all over me ribcage.’

‘Look Mom,’ Rose said. ‘There’s no need to worry. You don’t have to do anything. The money’s coming in from me and Sam and our Grace’ll be out at work next year when the babby’s born. We’ll do everything round the house. You just take care of yourself for a change.’

‘What about Sid’s dinner today? You know how he carries on . . .’

‘Let him get it his bloody self for once,’ Rose snapped, exasperated that her father’s needs were as usual the thing that overrode everything else.

Grace shushed her. ‘It’s all right, Mom,’ she said to Dora. ‘I’ve got a few minutes before I go to school. I’ll sort out something to keep him quiet. You just have a sleep and you’ll feel better. Rose – you’d better get off to work or you’ll be late.’

Rose could feel her sister’s stoical calmness beginning to pervade the room. She realized it would be better if she went. She left Grace methodically tidying her father’s things in the bedroom and tucking the covers round Dora so that only her grey face, creased in discomfort, was visible.

It was the first time Dora had been able to take to bed during a pregnancy. The sickness left her weak and wretched, and it was several weeks before she was able to be up once the worst was over.

The day had begun well. It was a frosty November morning. The builders on Rose’s walk to Lazenby’s had almost finished their work, and this fact had stirred Alfie Meredith to new realms of courage. He thought Rose was the best-looking girl he’d ever seen. He longed to ask her out and spent almost all his time rehearsing what he might say. Rose, though she smiled and waved at him, never gave him a thought the rest of the time.

When Alfie approached her that morning, Rose turned to him with her usual smile and said, ‘All right, Alfie? Job’s about done, isn’t it? I s’pose you’ll be moving on soon?’

‘Yes,’ he said, walking alongside her. ‘That’s it – yes. Er, Rose. Just stop a tick will you?’

She stopped and waited, looking at him.

‘I wanted to ask you . . .’ He ran his sandy hand through the already wayward hair and it stuck up even more. ‘Would you think of coming out with me – on a date like?’

Rose decided in a split second what approach to take to this. She wasn’t keen on the idea of walking out with Alfie, though flattered by the question. She decided to let him down gently by keeping up a joking banter. She started to walk on again slowly.