PRAISE FOR VALENTINE JOE
This is a beautifully written story that sensitively evokes the rawness of grief and how it can trap the living – and if it doesn’t make you cry, you must have a heart of flint.
DAILY MAIL
[A] touching temporal romance.
FINANCIAL TIMES
. . . this book stands out as a wonderful introduction for a new generation to discover the facts about the carnage and cruelty but also the humanity and courage which so marks these terrible events.
SCHOOL LIBRARIAN
Such is the strength and compassion in the writing that this is not a miserable read but an inspiration . . . Highly recommended.
HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY
A moving exploration of the war’s impact resonating down the years.
TONY BRADMAN, AUTHOR
. . . this heartbreaking story is essential reading for readers of all ages . . . There is a lot of emotion, romance, history and tragedy packed into the 150 pages . . .
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
A thought-provoking, original and deeply moving story which brings the war vividly to life.
JULIA ECCLESHARE
It’s a short read but one that has a strong impact and stays in your head even after you’ve finished, ensuring that Valentine Joe’s very real story will never be forgotten . . .
WONDROUS READS BLOG
A MESSAGE FROM CHICKEN HOUSE
I still have my uncle’s ARP (Air Raid Precautions) badge. He was a warden during the Blitz and told me hair-raising stories of terror and courage set at a time when bombs fell on ordinary folk in London. But he had other stories, too: funny and dangerous tales of kids and animals allowed to play on bomb sites free from adult supervision!
Rebecca Stevens gets to the heart of both the bad parts and the good – and imagines what would happen if a girl from today went back to try and put past mistakes right. It’s a very human story, and you’ll love putting yourself in the shoes of a past generation. I suppose what’s important to imagine is if we could pull together like they did – I think we would.
BARRY CUNNINGHAM
Publisher
Chicken House
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
About Rose in the Blitz
Copyright
In memory of my mum and dad, Rosemary and John Stevens, and the men, women and children of all nations who died in the Second World War.
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember.
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
‘Rose? What’s going on?’
Rose could see why her aunt was anxious. There were police officers everywhere. Some were on the move, slamming car doors and talking into their radios; others were standing around in clusters in their bright yellow jackets, drinking tea out of paper cups. Their cars were lined up along the side of the road, blue lights flashing, with two fire engines and an official-looking white van with a yellow stripe. A few passers-by were hanging about, looking as if they hoped something interesting was going to happen, and a little boy and his dad had stopped to admire the fire engines.
It was Mum who’d suggested they went out for a cup of tea. Tommy-dog could do with a walk, she’d said, and Aunt Cosy might like a breath of fresh air. Rose knew Mum just wanted them out of the way so she could prepare for the evening, but she didn’t mind. She’d rather be out of the house anyway.
‘What are all these policemen doing?’ said Aunt Cosy. ‘And why is there a soldier over there?’
She was right. A young soldier in British Army green was clambering out of the white van, adjusting his beret and joking with someone inside.
‘I don’t know, Aunt Cosy,’ said Rose. ‘I’ll find out.’
The nearest police officer was a big man with a shiny pink face who was fussing about with a roll of blue-and-white plastic tape that read POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.
‘They’ve found a bomb,’ he said, without looking up.
Rose suddenly felt cold in spite of the May sunshine.
‘A bomb?’ she repeated.
The officer started wrapping his tape around the trunk of a huge tree that stood next to the old brick shelter at the corner of the common (which is what they called the area of open parkland near their house). Rose’s grandad had told her the shelter was built during the last war and had tunnels that stretched for hundreds of metres, deep beneath those of the tube station opposite.
‘Left over from World War Two,’ said the officer. ‘Unexploded. Builders found it buried under the grass while they were doing repairs on the bandstand.’
‘But that’s where we’re going, isn’t it, Rose? ‘Aunt Cosy looked so tiny, standing there with Tommy, very upright in her bright red jacket. ‘The bandstand?’
‘Not really, Aunt Cosy. We were going to go to the cafe. It’s next to the bandstand. Remember?’
Rose felt bad as soon as she said it – the word ‘remember’. Aunt Cosy hadn’t been very good at remembering for a few years now, and it had got worse recently. Mum thought they should talk to a doctor, but Rose didn’t see the point. Aunt Cosy was ninety-two, for goodness’ sake. Ninety-two! Everyone gets a bit forgetful when they’re that old, don’t they?
The old lady had turned her smile on the police officer. ‘I’m meeting somebody at the bandstand,’ she told him. ‘Somebody rather special.’ They weren’t meeting anybody, but Rose didn’t say so. ‘So you see, officer, it is rather important we get there on time.’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, madam,’ said the officer, straightening up and suddenly becoming more formal. ‘The entire park has been evacuated.’
‘Oh dear! Has it really? How long will we have to wait?’
‘Until the bomb squad gives us the all-clear.’ The officer trailed his tape across the path and wound it around another tree. ‘Nice dog,’ he added. Tommy wagged his tail. He didn’t understand everything people said, but ‘dog’ was a word he recognised. ‘What is he?’
‘We’re not sure,’ said Rose. ‘Part Jack Russell terrier, part springer spaniel, we think.’
The police officer made a big deal of looking at Tommy, who wagged his tail again, hoping he might produce some delicious treat from his pocket and give it to him as a reward for being a Good Dog.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘He’s never got any springer in him. More like a bit of your Welsh collie. Rescue, was he?’
Rose nodded. ‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘He was a stray.’ She clipped the lead on to Tommy’s collar. ‘I suppose we’d best get back. Aunt Cosy?’
But Aunt Cosy had found another police officer to chat to, a woman this time, so Rose wandered over to a bench with Tommy and sat down. It was a perfect spring afternoon, the kind of day when sunshine shimmered through the petrol fumes and office workers lazed away their lunch hours on pavements outside pubs. A single plane floated silently past, leaving a trail of white vapour like a chalk mark across the blue blackboard of the sky. Rose wished she was on it, going somewhere else. France. Germany. America maybe. China! Anywhere but here . . .
It was three years now since Dad had died and Mum needed to move on with her life. That’s what her friends said anyway, the ones who came round to sit at the kitchen table and drink wine late int
o the night. Rose would hear them, after she’d gone to bed, murmuring together and laughing. And Mum had moved on now. She’d met Sal. His full name was Salvatore and he was Italian, a photographer, with a big, loud laugh and hairy arms and a son called Leo who was in year eight at school and thought he was funny but wasn’t.
And Sal and Mum were getting married tomorrow.
Rose was glad Mum had been able to move on, she really was. It was just that she couldn’t. She couldn’t close a door on that part of her life, the part with Dad in it, not yet. And ever since Mum had told her about the wedding and how Sal and Leo were going to move into Aunt Cosy’s house with them, she’d felt sort of empty – hollow, like a Russian doll with nothing inside.
She hadn’t wanted to tell anyone how she felt, so had just carried on as if nothing had changed. And it hadn’t, not really. School was OK, even though there were exams coming up. It was just . . . she wasn’t particularly interested in it any more, even the subjects she used to love, like English and psychology.
And it wasn’t just school. Whenever her friends Grace and Ella suggested doing something, she never seemed to feel like it. She’d rather sit in her room with Tommy and stare out of the window or chat online with her friend Fred (they’d met a couple of years ago and even though they’d not seen each other again, had been messaging ever since). He lived in Germany so he wasn’t going to suggest they meet up and go for a coffee or anything. But recently, as the wedding day got closer, she’d even stopped chatting to him. She didn’t know why, but when Fred wrote Hey Rose, how are you? she couldn’t bring herself to reply.
What she wanted to write was: Awful, actually. I feel horrible because my mum’s getting married to a man with hairy arms who isn’t my dad and they’re going to live happily ever after and might even have a baby together and there’ll be no room for me and I’ll be left out and lonely for ever and ever . . .
But she couldn’t put that in a message. So she didn’t write anything.
‘Rose?’ Aunt Cosy’s face was sparkling with amusement. ‘This young lady tells me she’s found a bomb!’
‘Yes, Aunt Cosy, I know—’
‘I think it was very clever of her, but it does mean we can’t get our cup of tea.’
‘Then we’d better go home. D’you think?’
‘I do think!’ said Aunt Cosy. ‘I do!’
‘Come on, then. Tom?’ Rose tugged his lead.
Tommy didn’t move. He was standing quite still, listening with every part of his body.
‘What’s up?’
Aunt Cosy put her hand on Rose’s arm. ‘She’s listening, darling.’ For some reason, Aunt Cosy thought Tommy was a female dog called Sophie. Rose had given up trying to tell her otherwise. ‘Dogs always hear them first,’ she added.
‘Hear what, Aunt Cosy?’
‘Shh!’ Her aunt was nodding as if greeting an old friend. ‘The air raid sirens,’ she said. ‘They start at the edge of the city. Then they come towards you, whooshing in like waves, closer, closer, closer. Listen. That’s our one now.’
Rose could hear . . . birdsong . . . the crackle and chatter of the police radios . . . traffic . . . the usual cheerful roar of London. Nothing else.
‘I can’t—’
‘Shh!’ Aunt Cosy held up one finger and looked at the sky. A single bird crossed the blue. ‘Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?’ She repeated the words like a chant.
Rose was scared. Her aunt could be a bit strange sometimes, but she’d never seen her like this. ‘What do you mean, Aunt Cosy?’
‘It’s the sound of the engines. I always think that’s what they’re saying: “Where are you?”’
‘Engines?’
‘The planes, darling. The German bombers.’ The old lady grabbed Rose’s arm. ‘We must get to the shelter! It’s starting, Rose! It’s all starting again!’
By the time they got home, Aunt Cosy seemed to have forgotten about the planes and the air raid sirens. It was like that with memory loss, Mum said (she’d been reading about it and had become quite an expert). Sometimes you were completely fine. Other times, like when something unusual happened or you were in an unfamiliar place, you got – well – a bit forgetful.
‘A bit forgetful?’ Rose had repeated. ‘Mum! She sees things that aren’t there!’
‘So do you,’ Mum had replied, looking at her over her glasses. Rose couldn’t argue with that. Dad always used to say she was like a satellite dish, picking up stuff that was floating around in the air, stuff that nobody else could see.
Aunt Cosy sat down with Mum in the kitchen to have the cup of tea she’d missed in the cafe, while Rose went up to her room with Tommy to check her phone.
There was a message from Fred. Just one word: Rose?
Rose knew he was wondering why she’d gone quiet on him. But she couldn’t reply. She didn’t know what to say, didn’t feel able to pretend that everything was all right when it wasn’t. And she couldn’t tell him how she was feeling, that would just be too weird. Maybe after the wedding she’d feel like it. Maybe after the wedding she’d feel better.
Maybe.
She looked at the dress hanging on the back of the door. It was a soft purpley-blue colour, plain cotton, knee-length with a full skirt and long sleeves. She hadn’t wanted anything too fancy. Neither had Mum. Her dress was silk, a darker shade of the same colour, and Aunt Cosy’s was even darker, a deep shade of violet, so dark it was almost black. She’d bought a hat as well, with grey silk flowers that matched her hair, and a long black feather. The old lady loved dressing up and had been looking forward to the wedding for ages.
Unlike Rose. She was going to be Mum’s bridesmaid and she was dreading it.
She touched the dress, feeling its softness between her finger and thumb, then sat down on the bed with Tommy curled up in his usual place at the end. The room was beginning to get dark as the daylight faded outside the window but she didn’t turn on the light. She liked this time of day when the air turned grey and grainy with dusk and the room filled up with shadows.
Rose had wanted this room, even though it was smaller than the other bedrooms, because it was at the back of the house and looked out over the garden. They’d been living here nearly a year now, she and Mum, in the house on Nightingale Lane. Neither of them had wanted to stay in the old house in Balham where every chip on the paintwork, every creak of the floorboards reminded them of Dad. So when Mum’s ninety-two-year-old relative had suggested they move in with her, it seemed the perfect solution.
Aunt Cosy wasn’t really an aunt; she was the cousin of Mum’s grandmother, which made her Rose’s cousin twice removed (or something equally difficult to remember). She’d never had children of her own, but had always been a very special person in Mum’s life, a sort of extra grandma, and was actually the reason why Rose was called Rose. Aunt Cosy’s real name was Rosemary, though she’d always been known as Cosy in the family. It was something to do with a little sister who couldn’t say Rosemary properly and the name had stuck.
Mum said she’d always loved coming to her Aunt Cosy’s house when she was little and Rose felt the same. It seemed so big and old and mysterious, full of shadowy corners and things to discover. There was a stuffed owl in the living room and a cuckoo clock from Germany in the hall, made of carved black wood. It didn’t keep very good time (in other words, Dad said, it was always wrong), and the cuckoo seemed to come out of its little door at random and cuckoo as many times as it liked. Once Rose had counted thirteen cucks and twelve oos (the last cuck was left hanging in the air without an oo, leaving Rose with a strange, unsatisfied feeling). The bird often seemed to emerge whenever she walked past and she suspected it of watching from behind its door so it could pop out especially to make her jump.
And then there was the overgrown garden with its birdbath and stone frog hidden in the grass, and the funny old shed that wasn’t really a shed at all but something called an Anderson shelter. Everybody had them in their gardens in the war, Aunt Co
sy said, you’d go out and sleep there to be safe from the bombs (though Rose didn’t understand why you’d be safer in a rickety-looking shed than a nice solid house). The shelter was half buried in the ground with grass and weeds sprouting from the roof, which made it look as if it had grown out of the earth, and whenever Rose and her parents had come to visit (which they used to do nearly every Sunday) she’d leave the grown-ups drinking tea in the kitchen and make her way down the garden to go inside.
The house must be worth a fortune now, Mum said, being so near the common, but Aunt Cosy would never sell it. She’d lived there all her life and it was too full of memories. It was funny, Rose thought, that she and Mum had left their little house in Balham to get away from their memories and now they were living in the middle of someone else’s.
Her phone buzzed on the bed. Fred again? No, Grace.
OK for tomorrow?!!!!!!!
No, thought Rose, I’m not OK. I’ll never be OK. Not in a million years will I ever be OK.
She turned off her phone and felt in the pocket of her parka, remembering the invitation that Mum had asked her to take to school for Grace. She’d forgotten all about it, but it didn’t matter, Grace was coming anyway. Rose opened the envelope and pulled out the stiff white card.
WE’RE GETTING MARRIED!
it announced in curly gold writing.
Please join Elizabeth, Sal,
Rose, Leo, Rosemary and Tommy
at 2.00 p.m. on 11th May 2016
at the Windmill Inn, Clapham Common
to celebrate our wedding!
She shoved it back in her pocket, not wanting Mum to find out she’d forgotten it, then went over to the window and stared out into the thickening dusk. The guests would be arriving soon, and she’d have to go down and get kissed to death by all of Sal’s relations who’d come over from Italy for the wedding. Still, Grandad would be there and that would make it more OK.
She opened the window, heaving up the sash and leaning out with her elbows on the sill. The air was still warm and smelled of wet leaves and damp earth. Tommy plopped off the bed and padded across the room to stand next to her. She could feel his warm weight against her leg as she listened to the hum of the city outside.
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