Some Sunny Day (19 page)

‘Rosie. I’m sorry…’

Her mother had died with her lover. If it hadn’t been for her affair with him she would probably still be alive. Pain and anger tore at Rosie.

A knot of women and children were already gathering in the street and Rob guided her towards them. A woman in a WVS uniform came up to them and started telling them that they would be
able to get a cup of tea and somewhere to sleep for the night at the local school where the WVS had set up a temporary shelter for those made homeless by the bombs.

‘I can’t go,’ Rosie told her politely. ‘I need to stay here with my mother. My father’s away at sea, you see, and I’m all she’s got.’

‘That’s all right, dear. You do not need to worry about all that now. You go with Gracie here,’ the WVS woman told her in a kind but no-nonsense voice.

‘I’ve got to go back on duty,’ Rob told her. ‘But I could try and come back?’

Rosie shook her head. ‘You go. I’ll be all right…’

Words. Just words…She was saying them but they meant nothing. All she could think about was her mother. All she could see inside her head was her mother’s lifeless body and that hand and arm betraying them both.

‘Right, dear, name and address, please?’

Rosie tried to focus on what she was being asked by the uniformed WVS woman, smiling patiently at her, but the noise from the press of people filling the church hall, combined with her own shock, made it almost impossible for her to answer.

‘It’s Rosie,’ she managed eventually. ‘Rosie Price.’

‘And your address?’

‘It’s number 12…’ Rosie couldn’t speak for
the salt taste of her tears burning the back of her throat as she tried to swallow them back.

‘She’s from Gerard Street,’ the WVS helper who had brought her to the shelter supplied. ‘Parachute bomb…’ she leaned closer to the desk and murmured something so quietly that the only word Rosie caught was ‘fatality…’

‘Betty here will take you to get a cup of tea. Have you got someone you can go to tonight?’

Rosie closed her eyes and squeezed back her tears. Once she would have been able to answer immediately that she had close friends to turn to, knowing that the Grenellis would have taken her in and cared for her; helped her, comforted her and loved her – once – in what seemed to be a different lifetime now. She shook her head.

‘I should have left a message at the house for my dad,’ she burst out anxiously. ‘He won’t know. He might think I have been killed…’ What a dreadful place this was, she couldn’t help thinking, packed tightly with people, some of them wearing bomb-damaged clothes, others clutching unwieldy pillowcases and even sacks full of what Rosie assumed must be their personal possessions, all of them looking grey-faced and in despair. They were, she recognised, the new homeless of Liverpool, and now she too was one of them.

‘The authorities will deal with that entirely, dear. You can stay here tonight. Betty will find you a blanket. If your papers were in the house…’

Automatically Rosie reached for the bag she was wearing over her fire-watch siren suit.

‘They’re in there, are they? That’s good.’

Numbly Rosie allowed herself to be led away by the shy-looking young woman who had come over to her, suddenly aware for the first time of the reality of her own situation. Her papers and her ration book were in her bag, but the only clothes she had left in the world were those she was wearing.

She was taken to a large store at the back of the hall where more WVS women were handing out blankets and other necessities to the line of people waiting patiently to be attended to.

‘You wait here, and I’ll go and get you a cup of tea,’ Betty promised her, disappearing and returning within several minutes with a mug of tea, a couple of plain digestives and a fig roll.

Rosie hadn’t realised how cold and thirsty she was until she held the mug between her icy hands. A young woman behind her in the queue was trying to calm her crying children, and as soon as she had drunk her tea Rosie turned round to her and asked if there was anything she could do to help. She needed to do something – anything – to take her mind off the pain.

The young mother gave her a grateful smile and introduced herself as Daisy Oakes.

‘This is the second time we’ve been bombed out in as many weeks,’ she told Rosie in a tired voice. ‘The kids should have been evacuated and me wi’
’em but my husband wanted us to stay ’ere. I’m not staying for Hitler to have a third go at us, though.’ She shivered. ‘First thing Monday morning I’m off to me mum’s in Cheshire.

‘Have they asked you if you’ve got your ration book with you yet?’ Daisy asked her. ‘Because if they haven’t, if you tell them no you’ll get two weeks’ worth of coupons. My, you have got a good touch with the little ’uns,’ she admired, when the two older children stopped crying to listen to the little story Rosie was making up for them.

Rosie was only too glad to have something to distract her from the terrible events of the evening.

Eventually they reached the head of the queue and were given clean blankets and told that they must return them when they left the shelter.

‘If I was you, as soon as it comes light, I’d go and mek sure that if there’s anything to be salvaged from your home, you’re the one who gets it,’ Daisy warned Rosie. ‘I wished I’d done that meself, when I saw one of me old neighbours wearing me best coat, I can tell you, and her kiddies decked out in my little ’uns’ stuff. You can put your trust in no one these days. Mind you, if you can’t salvage nothing then the WVS will do what they can to help you. They kitted me and the girls out a treat.’

Rosie gave her new friend a wan smile as they made their way past all those who had already secured their blankets and their spot for what was left of the night, until they could find a bit of free floor space.

‘If you haven’t got anywhere to go, then they’ll try and billet you with someone, but from what I’ve heard it can take for ever to get a place on account of them in war effort work taking priority.’

The all clear had finally gone but Rosie knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. All she could think about was her mother. Sitting with her knees drawn up under her chin, and her blanket wrapped around her, fighting back the burn of her tears, she whispered her mother’s name, wishing she had told her she loved her one last time.

The last thing Rosie really wanted to do was to go back to the street that had once been home, but she knew that she had to do so, so after a breakfast of tea and a bacon sandwich provided by the WVS, which she somehow managed to eat, she handed back her blanket and steeled herself to make her way home.

A pall of smoke and dust hung over the city, and here and there a thicker, more acrid smoke was still rising from bombed-out buildings. Averting her gaze from where the heavy rescue teams were still working to remove debris, Rosie was suddenly confronted by the sight of the church they had all worked so hard to try to save. Its roof gone and its Gothic beauty destroyed, there was still something about its defiant stance even in its destruction that brought the sharp sting of tears to Rosie’s eyes. She found herself joining the quiet throng of worshippers making their way into the burned-out church
where its priests were preparing to hold Mass and hear the confessions of their congregation. Once the Italian families from the area would have been here to share everyone’s grief at the destruction of their church. Rosie thought sadly of the many processions she and Bella had walked in together, which had brought them to this church. Now the church, like her friendship with Bella, had been damaged beyond repair.

Keeping to the back of the church, Rosie made her own prayers. Despite the dreadful things that had happened during the bombing raid, there was somehow a sense of calm and peace here this morning, and a sense of unity too amongst those who had come, many of them the same people who had striven so unceasingly, risking their own safety, to save the building.

When the service was over it was hard for her to drag herself away from the church and its atmosphere of faith and strength and make her way back towards what had been her home.

The street was busy with inhabitants whose houses were still standing but who had had their windows blown out by the blast, and who were still trying to clean up the broken glass. Several of them stopped what they were doing to offer Rosie their sympathy.

‘’Ere, Rosie, come inside, love. I’ve got summat for you,’ Mrs Harris from three doors down called out to Rosie, ushering her into her own pin-neat home whilst cautioning her to ‘mind all the broken
glass’. ‘I was right sorry to hear about your ma, Rosie. I know there was them round here that didn’t hold with what was going on.’ Rosie winced. ‘But your ma was allus a good neighbour to me. I saw her goin’ in with that chap of hers many a time.’

Anger joined the desolation Rosie was already feeling.

‘I went out this morning and I found this lot,’ her neighbour continued, producing two pillowcases filled to the brim with clothes. ‘There’s not much. Them lads from the council said that everything will have been blown to bits, and what I did manage to find will need a good wash on account of it being covered in soot and dust.’

Rosie thanked her, blinking away her tears as she stared at the pillowcases. She could see the familiar sleeve of her mother’s dressing gown dangling from one of the cases. An acrid smell of soot and dust and burned cloth emerged from the bundle.

‘You’ll have your work cut out, after what’s happened, ’cos there’ll be the funeral to sort out and all that. If you need a hand with anything you just let me know. I’ve buried me husband as well as me own mam and dad, so I know what it’s all about.’

Rosie remembered that the WVS had said something to her about helping her to deal with the formalities of her mother’s death.

‘You’ll be moving in with your auntie now,
I suppose. Young Rob Whittaker is going to miss you.’

Rosie stood stock-still. After the shock of last night, she’d given no thought to where she would go, where she would live. There was no way in the world she wanted to live with her aunt – and no way her aunt would want her.

Rosie thanked Mrs Harris for what she had done and gathered up the pillowcases.

The gaping crater left by the bomb looked somehow worse this morning than it had done last night. Rosie’s gaze was drawn inexorably to the spot where she had last seen her mother’s body. There was nothing there now, of course, but she still walked over to where Christine had lain. If her mother hadn’t been involved in an affair she would still be alive now. Rosie felt as though a part of her almost hated her for what she had done, even whilst at the same time she would have done anything if only she might still be alive.

Here and there in the tangle of roof beams, bricks and plaster she could see the charred and twisted remnants of pieces of furniture. Putting the pillowcases to one side, she started to search carefully through the rubble.

An hour later she was forced to admit that there was nothing to be retrieved, no keepsake or memento of her mother that she could find to bring her comfort, nothing for her to hold in her hand, just as she would never again be able to hold her mother’s hand either. All she would have
to hold on to now would be her memories. Her memories – Rosie desperately did not want to have her last memories of seeing her mother alive. How she wished she had not heard what she had heard; not known what she had known. How she wished she could go back to the innocence of her childhood, when she had loved her mother unquestioningly, loving it when she acted daft with her and played with her. Those had been good times, happy times, the times with her mother that she would cherish in her heart, Rosie promised herself.

Picking up her pillowcases, she made her way back down the street to the house where Rob lodged. He had told her last night when he had walked her back to her devastated home that he would ask his landlady if she would rent out her other spare room to her. Rosie hadn’t paid much attention to what he had been saying then. She had been too distraught. But now she hoped desperately that he had done as he had said he would. She hated not having her own room and a decent bed to sleep in. It seemed too much to bear on top of everything else.

Rosie knocked on the Norrises’ door. Mrs Norris opened it almost straight away.

‘I don’t know if Rob has said anything to you…’ Rosie began uncertainly.

‘He has, but like I’ve already told him, I do not hold with a young couple who aren’t married living under the same roof,’ Mrs Norris said briskly, her expression softening slightly as she saw Rosie’s
disappointment. ‘I’ve nothing against you, Rosie. You’re a decent sort of girl, even if your mother…’ Her mouth tightened. ‘You can see how it is, I’m sure. I’ve got my reputation to think of and I don’t want anyone saying that I’m encouraging the wrong kind of goings-on under me roof. Besides, your dad will be home soon and he’ll sort summat out for the two of you.’

She was closing the door already, before Rosie could say anything further, leaving her standing on the doorstep. How many more of their neighbours had been aware of her mother’s affair and would judge her because of it? Rosie wondered miserably. And more importantly, what was going to happen when her dad got back? Would they tell him? It was bad enough that he had to return to find his wife dead, without having to learn that she had been unfaithful to him as well.

Rosie straightened her shoulders. There were things that had to be done: formalities to be dealt with and arrangements to be made for her mother’s funeral. She needed to pull herself together, to be strong. It looked as if she would be spending another night sleeping in the church hall, since there was nowhere else for her to go. It was hard to accept that in another few days it would be Christmas. Rosie thought of the small Christmas presents she had laboured to make for her friends, the pretty lace-trimmed slip she had saved so hard from her wages to buy for her mother and the warm woolly socks she had knitted for her father.

She spent the rest of the day at the nearest WVS shelter, grateful for the help she was given by the women on duty there, especially the one who offered to take her pillowcases to her own home for her and wash what clothes could be salvaged. She also introduced Rosie to an undertaker and went through with her the necessary arrangements.

It was late in the afternoon as Rosie was helping to entertain a small group of children, like her made homeless by the bombings, when she looked up and saw her father standing watching her.

Clumsily she got to her feet, hesitating instead of running to him as she wanted to do as she wondered how much he knew.

‘Have you heard – about the bomb and Mum?’ she asked him, eyes brimming.

He nodded, and opened his arms, and Rosie stumbled into them.

‘How did you find me?’ she sniffed. ‘Have you been home…?’

‘Not yet. Young Rob Whittaker had left a message down at the docks for me, saying what had happened and where you were. So I came straight here. I’ve bin given compassionate leave whilst everything gets sorted out.’

‘They said that Mum wouldn’t have known anything. She wasn’t…she just looked like she was asleep…’

She saw the look of anger that crossed her father’s face and asked him, ‘Dad, what is it? I did not mean—’

‘It isn’t you, lass. You shouldn’t have had to deal wi’ summat like this. I should have bin here with you. Aye, and happen if I had your mother might still be alive. She was allus on at me to give up the navy…Where’s your things?’

Rosie explained about the pillowcases and the kindness of the WVS woman.

If anything, her father looked even more savagely angry. ‘You mean you’ve got nothing? No clothes, no roof over your head? You’ve had to sleep here?’

‘Everyone’s in the same boat, Dad. Or at least those who’ve been bombed are. I was talking to a young woman last night and she’s been homeless for six weeks.’

‘Mebbe so, but that’s not going to happen to you. Come on.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To your Auntie Maude’s, of course.’

Rosie hung back, remembering how unwelcome her aunt had made her feel the evening she had gone to visit her, and knowing she couldn’t cope if she bad-mouthed her mother even now, but her father had enough to deal with, without her complaining to him about his sister.

An hour later her father was knocking on his sister’s door. Rosie watched as her face lit up when she saw him, only to frown again when she realised that Rosie was with him.

‘We’ve come to throw ourselves on your charity,
Maude,’ Rosie’s father announced. ‘A bomb hit the house last night.’ He paused and then finished quietly, ‘Christine was killed in the blast.’

There was not a word of shock or sympathy over her mother’s death, Rosie noted, as her aunt instructed them to come in.

‘It’s a mercy it was bombed before you got home, Gerry. What time did it happen, only I should have thought that Christine would have been at that job of hers at the factory, seeing as the siren didn’t go off until after tea.’

‘Mum hadn’t been feeling very well.’ Rosie felt obliged to protect her mother’s honour even if she was well aware herself that it was a sham. ‘I was on fire-watch duty, otherwise I would have been with her.’

‘Don’t go asking the lass any questions now, Maude. The poor girl’s had it all to bear and no one to help her.’

‘Well, she could have come here if she’d wanted to, I’m sure.’

‘We’d been trying to save Holy Cross church so I didn’t find out until late on about…about everything…It was Rob who told the WVS woman and somehow or other I ended up at the shelter. They were very kind there – helped with…with everything…and then when I went back this morning Mrs Harris from three down had been out and salvaged what she could for me. Not that there was much, and what there was was covered in soot and dirt.’

‘I’ll get the kettle on. You’ll be ready for a cup of tea, our Gerry. Rosie, don’t you go sitting down on one of my clean chairs in that dirty fire-watch suit. I must say I don’t approve of the way you young women are wearing such clothes in public.’

There could not have been a more marked difference between the affectionate way her aunt spoke to her father and the harsh rejection with which she addressed her, Rosie recognised, as she exchanged looks with her father.

‘Have a heart, Maude. The poor kid hasn’t got anything else,’ he defended her immediately. ‘I reckon she’ll feel much brighter once she’s had a bath and got some clean clothes on. Lucky I brought you a few things home with me from New York, Rosie.’

‘A bath, is it?’ Rosie heard her aunt sniff disdainfully. ‘And where does she think the hot water’s going to come from for that, may I ask? A stand-up wash is what she’ll have to make do with.’

‘She needs a bath, Maude. If heating the boiler’s the problems then I reckon I can get you a bit of extra coal. There’s a few chaps down at the docks owe me a favour or two. You go up, Rosie, and take your time, lass.’

Rosie could hear her aunt’s sharp voice protesting to her father as she took advantage of his ability to win over his sister, and hurried up the stairs. Normally her pride wouldn’t have let her accept the cold charity her aunt obviously did not want to give, but right now she couldn’t afford to listen to her pride.

Her aunt’s bathroom was Spartan and cold, just like she was, but Rosie was too appreciative of the opportunity to wash off the accumulated dirt of her night fire fighting to care.

Standing in the bath, she flannelled off the worst of the dirt before running what little hot water she dared into it to enable her to soak for long enough to get her cold body warm as well as clean.

She had just stepped out of the bath and wrapped herself in a towel when she heard a knock on the door and her father’s voice calling out, ‘Rosie, I’ve left you some things outside the door. They were meant to be for Christmas but I reckon you need them now.’

When she opened the door there were two large, beautifully wrapped parcels outside it. Picking one up, she started to unwrap it. Inside she found some underwear in silk and satin, and as she smoothed her fingertips over it, Rosie knew immediately that this had been a gift her father had intended for her mother. She hesitated, remembering how the undertaker had asked her about clothes for her mother to wear and how she hadn’t known what to say or do, but then the practical side of her nature, hardened by the experience of war and shortages, reasserted itself and she reminded herself that currently she was without so much as a change of knickers. Also inside the parcel were stockings, scent and a lipstick, and finally a twinset in her mother’s favourite shade of red.